


Safe Spaces

by dustlines



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angelic Grace (Supernatural), Angelic Lore, Big Bang Challenge, Castiel's Loss of Angelic Grace (Supernatural), Comfort, Comforting Dean Winchester, Cuddling Castiel/Dean Winchester, Emotional Castiel (Supernatural), Emotional Dean Winchester, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fallen Angels, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Flashbacks, Healing, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Protective Dean Winchester, Season/Series 08, Slow Burn, Suicidal Castiel (Supernatural), Supportive Dean Winchester, Surreal, Survivor Guilt, Tired Castiel (Supernatural), Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21767794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustlines/pseuds/dustlines
Summary: The angels have fallen, and Castiel is collapsing under the weight of what he's done. Nothing is as it was before, and Dean struggles to find Cas before it's too late to save him. The road, though, is full of many new and unpredictable obstacles, as fallen angels and the spread of untempered Grace are creating havoc all over the world.In this newly-ravaged, volatile climate of fear, Dean and Cas must rediscover how to rely on each other if they are to survive the wars both inside and outside of their own heads.[Canon-divergent from 8.23]
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 55
Kudos: 77





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story led to so many of my favorite memories in the SPN fandom. I loved writing it, and I loved seeing the reactions of the people who read it. It laid down a storytelling milestone for me that pushed me towards my original work, as well as introduced me to my favorite way to write the atmosphere of a scene.
> 
> Initially, I wrote this because I wanted to see Cas being taken care of when he needs it, but I also wanted to learn how to create a changed world, as well as witness how great change affects the people caught within it. Raw creation is a turmultuous, powerful force to be reckoned with, often destroying what once was in order to pave the way for what can be. I also enjoyed writing about Cas' headspace and how it gave me the opportunity to confront the tragic and yet beautiful realities of genuinely, deeply caring for someone who struggles to care about themselves. I look upon this story with love and appreciation.
> 
> As before and still now, much thanks and admiration go out to my wonderful artist, [Laura](https://everkings.tumblr.com), and incredible betas, [dirtyovercoats](https://dirtyovercoat.tumblr.com) and [crazyfoolstiney](https://crazyfoolstiney.livejournal.com/). You guys rock! :)
> 
> **CW** : language, some disturbing, fantastical imagery, and mentions of suicidal ideation.
> 
> Canon-divergent from 8x23.

Dean is breaking at least half a dozen laws as he rockets down the freeway, rubber wheels screaming through puddles that splash up like walls on either side of him. The Impala's rear window is gone, a casualty to the scream of a dying angel, and spiderweb cracks pepper the remaining windows, letting in rain and a cold, howling wind that smells of an electric fire: sharp and acidic when Dean inhales it down his throat. No street that he has driven on tonight has been free from damage, and the car rocks violently over uneven, shattered gravel below. The road is full of catastrophes, a fire blossoming on seemingly every distant hill, and it's impossible to drive for even a minute without finding something unpleasant.  
  
Dean's head is a whirlwind of fear. Whatever Cas did — or didn't — do, it couldn't have been anything good. Pontiac, Illinois—the place Cas seems to keep yo-yoing back to—is only about twenty miles away, and Dean wants to be there _yesterday_. Cas had been a wreck when he'd called Dean up about a hundred miles back, right before the phones and the radio had all stopped working, and Dean is trying not to panic.  
  
Ahead, though barely visible through the windshield wipers' desperate slashing against cold glass, there is a row of cars scattered across the road, their metal bodies crumpled like aluminum foil and rust already sapping them away. Dean steers to avoid them, though his hands are shaking against the wheel from the excess caffeine in his blood and the effects of not having slept in over 48 hours. There's hardly anyone else on the road, but there are plenty of abandoned vehicles, and he's more than once already had to get out and push one or two to the side in order to drive past them. Many of them had still been warm as though they could still be driven, while others had still had people in them, gone from this world. He hadn't enjoyed touching those cars. Dean's heart, in his chest, feels like it's going to explode, and this is the last damn time he tries any of Sam's bizzaro energy drinks before driving somewhere.  
  
Over the competing sounds of Motörhead's _Built for Speed_ , the rattle of army men in a stressed-out heater vent, and the howling of wind through the rain, Dean glimpses something in the darkness in front of him, reaching tall and stretched across one of the green roadsigns above the highway, but he dismisses it as a shadow. All of the road lights are out, so there are a lot of weird shadows out tonight.  
  
It's not a shadow.  
  
“Shit!” Dean slams on the breaks, but he’s already too close. The dark figure blocking the sign — having hundreds of reaching black arms and towering easily thirty yards tall — seems to swerve past the Impala’s windshield, but that’s only because the Impala has started to spin, wheels too waterlogged to handle a sudden stop. As the Impala whirls in a metal-shrieking, panicked circle, Dean is thrown forward, his ribcage crashing against the wheel, the pain blinding. His head bangs into his forearms, then rebounds when he lands on his side. Barely covering his face in time, the entire car recoils with a deafening bang and he is thrown against the door, yelling so loud his ears pop.  
  
Still not done rotating, the Impala screeches against the guardrail at an downward angle and then, finally, putters to a stop. Finally still, Dean slides down onto his side, a seatbelt buckle digging into his hip. Motorhead, feebly, warbles through a fuzz of static, and then shuts up in the middle of the line _I'm going crazy out of my mind every single night_.  
  
The rain falls down, a trembling crescendo against the Impala's now-broken metal skin. A storm seems somehow louder when the car is not moving, and Dean lies down on the seat, panting and staring at the water dripping through the windshield. His eyes try to flutter shut against the feeling of knives plunging deep in his chest, but he firms his jaw and rolls himself upwards with a groan and a few words he tries not to say in front of children. His hand lands shakily over his heart, prodding at sore flesh and finding, after a brief search, that though he is in tremendous pain, he has at least not broken anything.  
  
Probably.  
  
His body begs him to dip his head and deal with the pain in a quiet state of unconsciousness, but he catches himself with a hand against the dashboard, still shaking but now feeling weakened, too. He can smell smoke, vaguely, and hopes it's not the car. Squinting up through the frantic rush of windshield wipers, he tries to make out what the stupid multi-armed thing is that's standing in the center of the road.  
  
Swaying in the downpour, the dark figure still reaches towards him, its hundreds of long arms stretched out on each side of it and jolting in the hard rain. After only a few seconds to catch his breath, Dean fumbles for the door handle and, while holding onto his aching chest, he stumbles into the cold rain, a hand lifted to shield his eyes as he looks up at the massive oak tree that has sprung up from the center of the road.  
  
In the darkness, the tree blocks the highway sign and over half of the road. The tree’s trunk at its widest point is black-edged, covered in moss, and taking up nearly three lanes of the road. Already, there are two cars crashed against it, their metal bodies half-absorbed into the tree's roots, as though the tree were trying to consume them, and Dean hopes no one had been in the cars when it happened. He is reminded of the tree that had grown from Anna's Grace, that mammoth work of nature that had appeared overnight but that looked hundreds of years old in an instant.  
  
“Grace is pure creation,” Dean hisses in remembrance, a hand held to the pain in his ribs. He looks down at the ground, where raindrops are splattering against tiny, trembling shrubs of green leaves, which have sprouted from vines that are breaking up the road below him. With a huff of laughter — very painful; he hisses and falls against the rain-slick side of the Impala — he thinks that angels have a pretty funny way of defining creation. Oftentimes, what they cause looks more like destruction than anything else.  
  
Using the Impala's body for support, Dean splashes around to her front fender, rain pounding against his back. Exhaustion and a steering wheel-shaped bruise is making his breathing feel strained, like there’s a dinner plate wedged into the spaces between each rib, and the water rushing down his nose isn’t helping him catch his breath either. He smells oil and steam from somewhere under the hood, the Impala no doubt upset with the forceful way he’s had to treat her since the sky started falling, and he hopes he can find a working mechanic station to steal parts from once Cas is accounted for.  
  
“Damn it,” he murmurs, gentling his touch as he reaches the heat trapped in the Impala's broken skin, visible only through her one remaining, golden headlight. He pets her side, thumbing the slick, ruined chrome of the fender, and the crumbled hood. “Aw, baby, no…”  
  
The Impala’s right front side is a mess, the headlight on that side darkened and hanging on by a thread, while both doors on that side are dented in and scraped white and silver by the guardrail. He can't fix everything, but he doesn't want to drive around a broken world at 4:00 AM with one headlight, so he crouches in the soaking rain to see if anything can be done about the shattered plastic casing of the headlight and the — miraculously — unbroken bulb hanging out of it by a thin, black wire.  
  
Carefully, Dean pushes the headlight bulb back into its cage of shattered plastic, with dripping fingers twisting the electric cable around to hold the bulb in place. With a brief flicker, that headlight comes back on, though it glows fainter than its counterpart on the opposite side of the car. It's not perfect, and it'll probably fall out sooner than later, but it's going to have to do. Blinking away a bright green afterimage of light from his retinas, Dean walks around in the rain briefly, prodding at various places on the Impala with his foot to make sure she's not going to fall apart. All the while, he is breathing shallowly, his hand held to the blossoming pain in his chest.  
  
The damage to the Impala is severe, and that makes Dean feels queasy, but she's endured worse, and he doesn't have time to freak out right now. Instead, Dean ducks gingerly back out of the rain and into the driver's seat. A lump has taken residence in his throat, waterlogged and as heavy as the clothes on his back, and he bows his head against the wheel. He murmurs an apology, perhaps to his car or perhaps to the world at large, and then toes the accelerator.  
  
With a grumble and a high, frantic screech of guardrail against the car scraping its way off of it, the Impala moves forward once again. Dean realizes, as he's driving over bumpy roots and around the giant oak tree in the middle of the road, that he has begun saying a brief prayer, trying to tell Cas to hold on.  
  
Dean stops himself abruptly, and his chest seizes with a feeling he can't name, but which sends prickles all up and down his arms and legs. After all, Cas can't hear him anymore. For all he knows, Cas will never hear him again. From the desperation that had been in Castiel's babbling voice over the phone, so out of character that Dean hadn't fully believed it was him for the first ten or so seconds, Dean honestly can't be sure.  
  
He tells himself the shudder that runs up his back at the thought is just the heater breaching the wetness of rain drying on his skin, or maybe just the wind creeping through the back window, making it impossible to feel warm. Swallowing hard, Dean floors the acceleration pedal, forcing the Impala to drive even faster through the pouring rain.  
  
For the next several miles, the Impala is little more than a lightning bolt against an empty, occasionally-broken road, and Dean can't stop repeating to himself that he knows he can't hold on for much longer.

.

T.B.C.

.

2013.10.09

[.](https://dustlines.livejournal.com/30931.html)

* * *

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* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean picks up Cas from the hospital, Cas struggles with feeling numb, and Dean has a few "new" thoughts about Cas that are maybe-not-so-new.

Before phone service and other means of communication all over the world had disappeared, Dean had been able to get a rough estimate of Castiel's location. After all, the phone Castiel had been using had been Dean's own, slipped into Cas' pocket when Dean saw the mess with Heaven going south and hadn't known how else to keep tabs on Cas in the fallout.  
  
Now, the sun is barely casting a pale, lilac glow over the edge of an otherwise dark horizon when Dean pulls the struggling Impala into the parking lot of the hospital Cas had called him from. There are cars parked haphazardly all over the lot, and an ambulance wailing on its way down the street, heading towards him. Dean turns in as soon as he finds an empty space, and as he pulls his aching bones from the heated cave of his car and into the drizzling world outside, the ambulance rushes through its own driveway, set apart from him.  
  
Bracing his shoulders, Dean rubs at his aching chest and maneuvers his way through the fire-stained morning, the scent of ash thick in the navy blue air, even though nothing nearby is visibly burning. Scrubbing a tired hand down his face, he blinks until his vision is clearer, and then heads for the sliding entry doors.  
  
Inside the hospital waiting room, there is a rushing of noise and panic that is palpable, and Dean has to suck in a quick breath and clench his fists in his pockets just to keep from running back out again. Injured people in various states sit in blue, polyester chairs and fold-out seats set into the empty gaps beside those, their bodies washed out by harsh, florescent lights. Many are covered in burns or, peculiarly, slashes across their bodies in one way or another, and if _these_ people look bad, Dean is afraid to know what the serious cases who have already been admitted must look like. No one notices him when he walks in; they're all too preoccupied by their own pains.  
  
Lump growing only that much bigger in his throat when Dean realizes he does not see Cas in the chattering, whimpering cluster of terrified humanity, he wavers towards the receptionist's desk and asks if someone fitting Castiel's name and description has been admitted here. He expects to be asked for a last name, and while he's trying to figure out what last name Cas would use, the receptionist's green eyes light up in recognition, then pity, and Dean's stomach — already tender and sore — does a cartwheel through the back of his spine.  
  
"Is he okay?" Even to his own ears, the words come out blunt with terror, and Dean grips the flaking plastic edge of the counter as the woman behind the counter ( _Natalie_ , her nametag reads) stands up to put a hand on his arm.  
  
"It's all right," she says, and points with soft green nails at a set of doors on the other side of the room. "You're his assistant?"  
  
Dean has no idea what this means, nor does he care. He nods and tries to give his most charming smile, aware his best efforts only go so far when he's so tired he could collapse at any moment. "Yeah, he needs me, uh — " For some reason, his throat dries out almost completely, but he swallows and adds, "I... I just have to help him. He's kind of — "  
  
"Got his work cut out for him tonight, doesn't he?" Natalie looks sad, and while Dean is trying to read into why, she presses a button on her keyboard, and the doors on the other side of the room begin opening with a hiss of hydraulics and plastic. "Go on through the doors. He's somewhere in the back."  
  
" 'Somewhere?' " Dean wonders aloud, then darts away when Natalie gives him a strange look. He has no desire to watch the doors slam shut in his face, not when the trip to get here was such a hellish endeavor. "No, forget it. Thanks."  
  
The hallway beyond the set of opened doors is, if possible, even more horrifying than the waiting room outside. The sounds of pain and fear are everywhere, and the rush of nurses and doctors in the hallway lead Dean to press himself against one wall, just to stay out of the way. Everything smells like antibacterial soap and armpits, and Dean can feel himself starting to sway on his feet.  
  
"Hey!" He grabs the elbow of a woman in green scrubs, a surgeon pulling off her latex gloves on the way to her next destination, wherever that is. "I'm looking for Castiel. Do you know whe-?"  
  
"Cas?" Already pulling away, the surgeon looks irritably at her watch, blonde curls of hair falling into her eyes from under a hastily applied surgical cap. "Oh, the priest." While Dean is processing this new bit of information, the surgeon looks back and forth between Dean and another door that's farther away. "He's, uh, probably still in critical care. That direction." The surgeon waves towards one of the distant hallways, but Dean doesn't need any more help. He's been in enough hospitals to make his way through one without too much trouble.  
  
"Okay, thanks," Dean says. As he runs where she'd pointed, careful to avoid aggravating his injuries by trying not to run into any part of the thrum of rushing, babbling humanity, he peels himself out of his jacket. When it's gone, the chill of slightly cooler air is unexpectedly welcome against the body heat pouring in all around him. Balling his jacket against his chest, he ends up in just his t-shirt and jeans below, hoping the new look makes him seem a little more presentable.  
  
He reaches critical care shortly, where the mood is — as some might not expect — actually less harsh than less desperately injured areas of the hospital. Panic and sobbing has been replaced by a quiet beeping of machines, the scents of disinfectants, and an underlying sourness, dense in the air. Dean's shoes squeak loudly across the tile floor, and he maneuvers around just a few hospital beds in the hallway before someone steps out from a room to his right, and Dean's heart does a backflip.  
  
Standing in just his black suit, white dress shirt, and dirty blue tie, Castiel looks up, his hands immediately balling into tight fists at his sides. His tie is skewed, and his eyes are distracted and deep. They have a hollow quality to them that only turns to shock when Dean darts towards him. Cas jerks backwards, looking into the room he's just come from before returning his gaze to Dean with a defeated sigh.  
  
"Cas!" Dean shouts, and before he can stop himself, he's run forward and thrown his arms around his friend's stiff, unyielding frame.  
  
"Dean." Face crushed against Dean's shoulder, Castiel rests just the barest pressure of his hands against Dean's back. He feels like he could slip away at any moment, and Dean grips him harder to compensate. "Ah..." Cas makes a slightly strangled noise as Dean's arms contain him, as though he's not sure what to do, or maybe just can't breathe as well, "are—are you all right? And Sam?"  
  
Dean pulls back, his hands lifting to settle over the hollows of Castiel's collarbone. "We're good." It's not entirely true, but he'd at least managed to get Sam's health stabilized right before dropping everything to get out here in time. "How're you holding up? I got here as fast as I could, but the road's a mess. I don't even know how you got the phone to work."  
  
Cas' brow lowers, and this close, Dean can see shadows building in the fine lines beneath Castiel's eyes. It seems unfair that the man's only been human for less than ten hours, and is already suffering from exhaustion so profound he looks like he might seep right into the ground, boneless. His shoulders have hardly any strength in them, no resistance against Dean's grip. Dean is amazed at how little he cares about any of that. He's just glad the guy hadn't killed himself before Dean got here.  
  
"Dean, how did you find me?" Cas takes a wide turn around Dean's body, and Dean glimpses a set of rose-colored rosary beads swinging from Cas' fingertips as he heads in the direction of another room. Cas is holding the beads carelessly, like they are an afterthought, and Dean is pretty sure they don't belong to him. Dean hurries to keep up, no matter the way his entire chest seems to turn into one giant fireball of pain at the quickened pace.  
  
"What? Dude, you asked me to be here, so I'm here. Did you think I wouldn't be?" Dean tries not to feel sick when Cas' eyebrows lift and then settle just as abruptly, as though that is not far off from Castiel's beliefs. Dean tries to move forward. "So, uh, the priest thing's new."  
  
Cas' shoulders stiffen, forming a straight, 90 degree angle between them and the bend of his neck. "It won't be a permanent role. However, I can see that it's currently needed. People are dying, and this is something I can do."  
  
Dean follows when Castiel ducks into the hospital room of an elderly man who is covered in crisp, white bandages. The dying man's eyes are shut, his breathing raspy around a tube in his throat, while a man of about the same age sits at his bedside, appearing distraught. Cas nods to them both, and the man who is sitting beside the bed swallows and nods back, his hand tightening around the hand of the injured man in the bed. They are both covered in burns, their flesh only half as smooth as it should be.  
  
"Cas," Dean whispers, even as Cas is walking farther away from him. "Seriously, man. You called me. You said you _needed_ me with you. You said that, Cas!"  
  
Something strange and uncomprehending fills Cas' eyes as he looks over his shoulder at Dean, and then he swallows. "Dean — " Before he can continue saying whatever he's thinking, his mouth clicks shut, and he waves with one of his hands in a gesture that looks rather helpless. "I... I can't discuss this here. Please, will you retrieve my coat? It will be with the personal belongings of a man named William Moss." Cas turns away, and very, very softly, Dean hears him say, "The man died after I brought him here."  
  
Standing in the doorway to a room in which Castiel has very clearly come to deliver last rites to the elderly man on the bed, Dean swallows down a frozen chill that is seeping through what feels like his every pore. As Cas sits down in the plastic chair opposite the dying man's grieving companion, refusing to meet Dean's gaze, Dean feels the absence of his friend's attention like a punch to the gut.  
  
"Cas!" he hisses, to which the grieving man and Cas both look up sharply. Dean stumbles around in the doorway, feeling used and hollowed out, and even more so when Castiel puts a single finger to his lips and says around it, softly:  
  
"Dean." When Dean jolts backwards, a tingling shame replacing the numb chill that had filled him just a moment before, Cas adds, quietly, "I will be done here shortly. I'll meet you outside."  
  
"Yeah, right." If Dean delivers the words harshly, well, he can't be blamed for it. He'd dropped everything to come here and try to keep his friend from killing himself or something equally stupid, and he'd even crashed the Impala to do it. If Cas isn't even going to be grateful, Dean will be damned if he's going to let it ruin his day. "I'll see you outside."  
  
Dean hears a scraping chair as he turns to leave, but he doesn't look back to see if Cas has stood up to call him back, or simply remained sitting where he was, an indifferent look on his face. As Dean stomps down the hospital's hallway, holding his injured ribcage in one hand, he thinks he hears Castiel's chair push back into place, but there's no way for Dean to know for sure because he's moved too far away.  
  
Cas' absence a hollow drain behind him, Dean only retrieves the once-angel's coat, and then walks with it back into the rain.

The bench outside the hospital is damp and uncomfortable, and the sun is rising pale and pink over a crested blue horizon when Dean finally hears Cas' familiar gait. Cas is walking through a nearby doorway, pausing on the way to toss his rosary into a garbage bin. He then takes an audible, slow breath, and then comes over to stand beside Dean's sitting form. Nearly an hour has passed since Dean found and then left Castiel in the hospital, and by now Dean's irritation has faded to a dull, wounded throbbing in his stomach. When he looks up to apologize, Cas only frowns down at him.  
  
"Dean, I'm sorry... for everything," he says, quietly, under the sounds of ambulances wailing on the other side of the lot, "but the phone call you received wasn't from me."  
  
A cold shiver runs up Dean's back, and he's not sure how to respond, other than with intense concern. If Cas hadn't made the call, any number of horrifying alternate explanations exist. Shape-shifters, demons, and even Leviathans are all capable of mimicking human voices, and if this one had known where Cas _was_ , that's even more dangerous. Dean stares up at Cas, only belatedly realizing his mouth has slipped open when Cas fidgets where he's standing and then sinks onto the bench beside Dean with a sigh.  
  
"Regardless," Cas' head bows, tiredness all over him as he puts his elbows on his thighs and covers his face with his hands, "I appreciate that you are here. I find you to be a great comfort."  
  
Dean's scalp starts itching, as well as the back of his neck, and he swallows, clenches his jaw, and looks anywhere but at Cas. "Oh. Um, yeah, okay." Dean sits in awkward silence for a moment, feeling the occasional patter of fading raindrops as they land intermittently on his face. "So, how... how _are_ you holding up?" He adds, a half a second later, "I want to know."  
  
"I can't feel anything." Cas' body is a sagging line beside him, back curving under his cheap black suit. “I think I'm in shock.”  
  
As Dean looks at his defeated friend, he notices a crusted line of red on Cas' neck. The cut is just under Cas' shirt collar, which Cas has pulled high, perhaps in an effort to hide the damage.  
  
"You're hurt," Dean says, immediately concerned.  
  
"So are you," Cas notes, in a dry voice, but he does not lift his head from his hands.  
  
"Shut up, that's right by an artery." He starts pulling at Cas' collar, and Cas does not protest, just lets Dean drag him closer to be inspected. Under the pale glow of the sunrise and the flickering parking lot lights, Dean sees a jagged cut, easily half a foot long, burrowing its way across Cas' neck. It doesn't look accidental. It looks like someone tried to stab Cas in the throat and missed. "Someone _did_ this to you."  
  
Still pulled up against Dean's side (and quite possibly leaning into him now), Cas nods vaguely. "My brother, Namiel, landed close to me. When I found him, he was attacking a number of people." Slowly, Cas pushes Dean's arm away and stands up. He reaches for the tan coat in Dean's arms, but Dean keeps holding onto it. With a defeated sigh, Cas begins walking into the parking lot, and Dean scrambles to follow him. "My brother was... displeased with our situation... understandably. I managed to distract him so that no one else could be harmed, and when he held me down, I reacted badly. I took my own sword, and I killed him."  
  
"Shit, man,” Dean sucks in a breath through his teeth, “that's awful."  
  
Castiel does not take the offered sympathy as Dean had expected him to. Instead, Cas lowers his eyes to the parking lot gravel and nods vaguely. His walk is tugging him towards the front end of a parked car, and when Dean realizes Cas is about to collide with the car, Dean puts a hand on Cas' arm and tugs him away. Without any obvious reaction, Cas lets Dean guide him.  
  
“I'm somewhat concerned by how little I'm feeling, Dean,” he says, with a slow breath. His eyes look bruised, black circles burrowed under them like burial grounds, when they flicker down to Dean's hand on his arm. “I don't think this numbness is going to last.”  
  
“One step at a time, Cas. We'll deal with it.” They've reached the Impala, and for the first time all day, Dean watches Castiel's eyes widen impossibly. "Cas, what?"  
  
“Your car.” Castiel's chest heaves, his jaw clenching in a way that, on almost any other day, would probably make Dean laugh. Except Cas then takes a step backwards into traffic, right into the path of a speeding truck, and gasps out, “It's been damaged — ”  
  
“Cas!” Grabbing Cas' sleeve, Dean yanks his friend back into a safe space. Barely missing Cas, the truck honks and zooms past, the driver's muted yell shrieking through the glass window as the truck speeds away. When Castiel starts spinning dazedly, Dean tugs at Cas' suit jacket until his friend's hands are pressed to the Impala's hood, Dean's hand on his back to help him lean there without falling. “Hey! How about _not_ walking into the road?”  
  
“I'm sorry.” Castiel blinks, even as he sinks downwards. “If you hadn't come here — ” His knees hit the busted fender and he crouches further, looking under the car. Dean thinks he's trying to find where the damage begins, until he sees Cas flatten his palms on the ground, head bent low. “This is my fault. Everything — ”  
  
“Cas, it's just a car!” Dean's body flushes with heat, and even as he's terrified by what he's just said, he somehow gets that it needed to be said when Castiel winces and looks up at him. Cas looks like he's on the verge of some terrible precipice, and maybe he's about to jump, and Dean realizes that he needs to stop him. He crouches to Cas' level, even though Cas flinches all over when Dean's hands land on his shoulders. “Cas, listen to me, very carefully. You are more important than a car!”  
  
This doesn't seem to make any sense to Cas, who squints at Dean. With one hand, Cas holds onto the bent metal of the Impala's fender as though it is his port in the storm, while his other hand rests flatly on the harsh ground. He can't seem to reach his arms up to return Dean's hold, though Dean wonders if what he's feeling under his hands is Cas starting to tremble. Without his coat, he looks small: not delicate, but still in need of care.  
  
“Dean,” he says, sounding like he can hardly catch his breath. “I don't know what to do.”  
  
“We'll figure it out.” Dean starts pulling him up, hands under Cas' armpits, navigating the other man's stumble to the Impala's passenger side door. “ _Together_.” Cas' bones feel surprisingly jagged under his hand, like something about them has been broken off, and Dean wonders if Cas has always felt this way: a crumbling entity, stretched thin around his own, brittle bones. “You gotta trust me on this, man.”  
  
Cas opens his mouth. He laughs a little, or at least he almost does. What escapes is an ugly, breathy sound, and when Dean slips Cas into the car, he's still making it, choking sounds disguised as amusement. The sound is almost genuine, as though Cas has found something terribly funny, but the way he clutches the dashboard in front of him reveals nothing but panic.  
  
“Dean, what... what am I doing?”  
  
“If I had to guess, I'd say you're starting to feel something.” Dean puts Cas' bundled trench coat in his friend's lap, and Cas' hands lower to grab that instead of the dashboard. “Here, hold onto that.”  
  
Dean shuts the door as securely as he can, given the bend in the Impala's side, and when he comes back around to get into his own seat, Cas is bowing his head and vibrating slightly, his face buried in his own coat. He looks like he's stopped breathing.  
  
“Cas?” Dean tries to reach over, tries to touch his friend, but he runs out of courage halfway and lets his hand drop to the seat between them instead. Cas is freaking him out.  
  
“It's... all right,” Cas exhales into his own coat, and Dean's stomach aches when he realizes Cas is telling Dean it's okay that Dean doesn't want to comfort him. Breathing unsteadily, Cas shakes his head as though to refuse an offer that hasn't been given, then bows his head sideways, his forehead pressing against the cracked glass window of the door. “I just... I'd like to sleep.”  
  
“Yeah, okay.” Something in Dean's chest seems even more to have shattered, and there are sharp, uneven pieces all over his body, ripping into him whenever he moves. He swallows, his ribs sore, but his throat even worse. It's hard to talk when he adds, “You can sleep.”  
  
Cas' body expands, just slightly, then tightens even more when he exhales. Dean almost expects him to say something more, but he doesn't. Cas' eyes slip shut, and as his breathing levels out, Dean recognizes the weird, self-calming, yoga-breathing pattern he hears Sam do sometimes when Dean has pissed him off, and Dean wonders when Sam taught Cas that, and why. Maybe Cas is on the verge of breaking down more often than Dean wants to face, and maybe Sam had noticed.  
  
Taking a leap, Dean pushes his hand through the seemingly solid air between himself and Cas. Before he can stop himself, he rests a hand on Cas' forehead. Cas tenses, but then some of the tension slips away from the creases around his mouth. Encouraged, Dean smooths his thumb over the space between Cas' eyebrows, and when Dean goes further to brush back the fringe of Cas' bangs, Cas' head moves with the motion, and then his eyes flicker open slightly.  
  
“Dean?” he says, with just the barest hint of a question that Dean isn't ready to answer. Cas looks dazed and disbelieving, as though Dean has just told him a lie that he still wants very badly to believe in.  
  
The look makes Dean uncomfortable, and he turns away. Outside the Impala, several large trees that Dean imagines were not there the night before are breaching the horizon over the distant town. Dean's chest is aching, from bruises and maybe also something deeper, something that sometimes hurts when Castiel has been missing for too long and Dean is worrying about him. It's not a feeling Dean enjoys having when Cas is _right there_.  
  
The Impala's engine sounds louder than it has any right to when Dean starts the car, and he feels Cas' gaze on him for about half a minute of silence before Cas resettles against the cracked glass window, his eyes half open and only slightly less than sightless. In Cas' lap, his coat is held loosely: still needed, but no longer the only anchor in the storm.  
  
The Impala rumbles over uneven pavement, past the flow of injured people running in and out of the hospital, and Dean, driving over changing, damp streets once more, starts looking for a place to keep him and Cas safe for the rest of the day.

.

T.B.C.

.

2013.10.09

[.](https://dustlines.livejournal.com/31117.html)

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	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean helps Castiel through a panic attack, triggered by his missing Grace and the fall of the angels.

Castiel doesn't expect sleep to come easily for him, but that's exactly what happens. The moment his exhausted body has sunken onto the peculiarly torn and damp seat of the Winchesters' Impala, his eyes seem to gain weight, and only shutting them offers any relief. His mouth tastes bitter, of blood and remnants of old hospital coffee, and his neck aches, both from an actual injury, and from one he only _believes_ he can still feel. The fact that the front of his neck hurts more than the side, even though only the side is technically damaged, is of great concern, and he hopes it will not continue. He does not welcome reliving what is no longer happening to him.  
  
As Castiel thinks, he feels Dean's hand press against his face, and then slide up into his hair. The touch is startling, but warm, and something in Castiel unravels. It takes everything he has not to lean into the offered comfort, at least until he can convince himself the past day and night of horrors was only a hallucination, or possibly an implanted memory.  
  
The touch does not last, as Castiel knew it would not, and he returns his face to the blissful cold of the broken glass window beside him. Lulled by the scents of Dean beside him and water in the air, Castiel eventually sleeps, and he does not dream.

An indeterminate period of time later, the blissful blackness behind his eyes is shaken, and Castiel's vision de-fogs. In the center of his gaze, or perhaps a little to the left of it, Dean crouches into the open door of the car and reaches for Castiel's shoulder.  
  
“Hey, buddy,” he's saying, “come on, let's get you out of this car.”  
  
As Dean's hand lands on his shoulder, Castiel's entire body jolts, in an inappropriate reaction of fear. Dean pulls back immediately, eyes wide and hands held up.  
  
“Whoa, easy,” he says, then slowly lowers his hands, now palms up, for Cas to grab. Castiel doesn't grab them, but Dean says anyway, “Still waking up, huh?”  
  
“Yes.” Humiliated, Castiel shakes his head and very carefully puts a hand on the door to begin pulling himself up. His eyes feel like they've been scraping against the ground below his feet, that harsh, pebbly mess with weeds poking out of it every few feet or so. “It's a disorienting experience.”  
  
He tries to scrub down his eyes and get his feet under him to leave the car, but his entire body, bereft of his Grace to steer it, feels... uncoordinated. There's not as much filling his skin as there was before, and it's like trying to operate his wings with only a single feather. In front of him, Dean hovers, his hands still up, as though about to catch Castiel if he falls. Castiel almost tells him that it's a little late for that, but he reserves the bitter, caustic thought for his own savoring.  
  
A dizzy spell hits him, head too light on his shoulders, and before he knows what's happening, he's tumbled down and then into Dean's chest, and the man's arms immediately wrap around his back, holding him up. Castiel clutches Dean's elbow, heart throbbing painfully fast as he contemplates the potential of falling further. Under him, there is chewing gum or some other tacky substance sticking to his shoe. It is a pale, tan color.  
  
“Dean,” he mumbles, head still spinning. “I — ”  
  
“Whoa,” Dean says, again, but it's more a sound than a word, and Dean says no more than that, just makes a “ _shhh_ ” noise and adjusts to better support their combined weight by drawing Castiel's arm over his shoulders.  
  
Castiel's attention is drawn to the sky behind Dean, which is a pale, grayish blue. Standing against the sky is a tall, red sign, with yellow, neon letters. The sign is missing several light bulbs, so that the word MOTEL now looks more like MO—L.  
  
"That sign is broken," he informs Dean, to which Dean replies with an unexpected laugh. Dean nudges the Impala's door shut with his leg, then they start to walk, Castiel's arm resting in the warm place behind Dean's neck. Castiel squints at Dean, unsure what part of what he's just said was humorous. So close, Castiel can smell rain and a little bit of blood through Dean's clothes.  
  
"It's nothing," Dean says, in response to Castiel's unspoken question, "it's just... interesting to see how _you_ wake up."  
  
It's even more strange to feel himself waking up from anything other than death, but Castiel does not want to discuss this point. His skin feels... odd, as though there are insects crawling over him in every possible space. Unnerved and suddenly having trouble breathing, he shakes Dean off and turns to press his palm against the crumpled front end of the Impala, taking a moment to breathe. Dean, accommodating, stops with him, face tight with what might be concern.  
  
The world seems like it's spinning, and not in its usual way. As Castiel tries to stop the spinning, he hears Dean's voice, sounding strangely distant:  
  
“Cas, are you having trouble with people touching y-”  
  
Castiel interrupts that train of thought by grabbing Dean's shoulder, to which Dean staggers half a step back. It seems Castiel's sense of discordance is unbalancing them both. He realizes belatedly when Dean flinches that he has grabbed him too hard, and he loosens his grip.  
  
“Oh,” Dean stammers, then turns to look where Cas is pointing. “What?”  
  
"Is this where we're staying tonight?" Grateful that Dean is looking not at Castiel's quivering hand, but at where he is pointing, Castiel indicates the motel room in front of where the Impala is parked. On the door, a missing nail has made the number “2” in “23” dangle upside-down, approximating a 5 against the deep green wood, and there are very large vines growing over several rooms on the other side of the lot. Castiel wonders if an angel's Grace has fallen here, or if the place is merely spectacularly ill-maintained.  
  
Dean shrugs, reminding Castiel he's still holding the man's shoulder. Rapidly, Castiel removes his hand and returns it to the hood of the car, leaning onto the drying, warm metal as Dean says:  
  
"Yeah, it's all I could find, but hey, positives! It's still got running water _and_ lights. Stupid town's got, like, two usable motels, and the other one was — " Dean goes silent then, a hollowness in the empty space where he'd been speaking. Castiel can picture descriptions that could fill that empty space. Perhaps the other motel is on fire, or perhaps the dead bodies of Castiel's fallen brethren are littering its parking lot. Perhaps many human beings died there, as a result of the fires burning all over the world.  
  
Audibly, Cas hears Dean swallow, just before Dean adds, "The other options don't matter. Look, I'm dead on my feet, and this place is still standing, so unless you've got a good reason to leave, we're kinda stuck here." After a moment, Dean takes a step forward. His hand makes a single, incredibly slow scooping motion as it lands on Castiel's back and starts tugging. “Cas? C'mon, let's go.”  
  
Dean's hand on Castiel's upper back feels strange, the touch far too coddling and unsure, an awkward point of contact that even Dean does not seem sure about continuing. A tingling extends from where they're connecting, like Dean's hand is made of electricity, and Castiel is getting shocked. He pushes Dean off, abruptly.  
  
"No," Castiel barely manages to get out, and though he wants to say more, he can't figure out what should be said. Putting a hand to his forehead, he repeats, weakly, "No." There's something churning in his gut, and it feels like it's going to come up. He puts his hand over his mouth and tries to keep it down.  
  
"Okay, okay, hey. Cas, that's fine. Cas?" Dean is bending just slightly closer, only enough for his face to be seen by Castiel. “It's fine.”  
  
In the corner of Castiel's vision, Dean's hands hover in the air, palms out in acquiescence, and Castiel feels his entire body give a great shudder. He looks away, over the distant shadows of city lights, and then to the much nearer, decrepit motel.  
  
“Everything seems so loud,” he says, very quietly, but Dean is close enough to hear him anyway.  
  
“Yeah," Dean says, softly, and then adds, "probably weird, getting used to new senses.” Not touching him again, Dean hefts up a duffel bag from where it was resting beside the Impala's front wheel, then gestures for Cas to follow him to the motel room's front door. “Come on, it'll get easier.”  
  
Without a hand forcing him to move in any particular direction, it's less difficult for Castiel to unstick his feet from the ground and start walking. There's a single upward step needed to get off the driveway gravel and onto the thin, concrete sidewalk edging around the motel rooms, and while Castiel does manage to climb the step smoothly, it takes a great deal of concentration to do it. When he's in the motel room and has moved several steps over the auburn red carpet, Dean slowly closes the door behind them, adjusts the chains into their locks, and then sits on the bed nearest the door.  
  
“Ugly blankets,” is Dean's muttered comment, as he drops his bag and pokes at the swooping red and gold swirls leading to faded tan tassels at the foot of the bed. There are also pictures of gold crowns on the pillowcases. “I'm not royalty, and if I was, this would still look dumb.”  
  
Castiel drifts to the deepest point of the room, until he can place his back against the wall and lean there, breathing slowly. When his head isn't spinning quite as much, he grits his teeth together, managing to say, “Human royalty wouldn't stay in a place like this.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Dean stares down at the bedcovers under his hands, blinking slowly. Castiel is struck by the notion that perhaps Dean is even more exhausted than he is, as Dean has certainly done more productive things than Castiel in the past two days. “Their loss.”  
  
They rest in silence for a moment, Castiel acutely aware of the sound of a far-off car alarm. He wonders if a dead sibling is lying on top of the vehicle, a set of charcoal wings stretching on each side of them.  
  
"I'm going to shower," Castiel tries to say with a firm, sure voice, but instead his now completely human voice escapes him as a thready whisper.  
  
"Mind if I take a look at your neck first?" Though Dean remains sitting on the bed, giving Castiel a fair amount of space, somehow it does not feel like enough, and Castiel cannot figure out _why_. He has been in almost constant contact with either his own family or other humans for many hours, and Dean has not done anything at all to deserve the claustrophobic nervousness tightening the chords in Castiel's neck. In fact, Dean has been very kind, traveling so far to check on him, damaging his vehicle without blaming Castiel for it, and then touching Castiel's hair when his need for comfort became obvious.  
  
“Cas?” Dean's doing a weird, twisty thing with his hands, grasping them and releasing them in his lap before lowering them to clutch the edge of his bed, like he's not sure what he's supposed to be holding onto, but he knows he should be holding onto _something_.  
  
"After," Castiel grits out, as his body shakes a little more consistently, making it difficult to stand. He has to get away, to escape this situation, to be alone so he can console himself. The bathroom is blessedly close, and when its door shuts behind him, his hand makes the knob rattle. The mirror is gold-rimmed, and when he sees his own face, he startles backwards and slams so hard into the door that his vision jolts, pain spreading like fire across his back. This is the human face that he will have for the rest of his life, until he dies.  
  
"Dean," he gasps out, with an abruptness that startles even him. He hadn't known he was about to speak.  
  
"It's okay, Cas." From behind the door, Dean's voice is very close, a warm resonance vibrating through the wood, and though Castiel is desperately trying to get away from everyone, still Dean's attempt to reassure him makes a single breath slide easier through Cas' lungs. "Cas, listen to me, I'm right here."  
  
Dean isn't right here, of course. He isn't even in the room, but as Castiel fumbles out of his clothes, bare feet recoiling on cold tile until he steps back onto his discarded pants, knowing Dean is behind the door is something Castiel finds he'd be unable to handle losing right now. Something feels like it's coiling under his skin, wrapping around his organs like the Leviathans had while they were still inside him, and his knee bashes painfully against the side of the tub when he clambers into it, yanking off his suit jacket. When the suit jacket hits the floor beside his pants, he realizes belatedly that he's still wearing his button-up shirt, tie, and underwear, but now his hands are vibrating too much to get them off.  
  
He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He doesn't —  
  
Fumbling, he twists the tub knob as far to the left as he can get it, and frigid, ice cold water shocks his body into a sudden kneel, arms up against the tub wall in front of him as if to protect himself. The cold water swiftly gets hotter, while beneath him, a single, red thread of blood washes down from the scabbing wound on his neck and curls around the drain. With his hair sopping wet and getting into his eyes, he opens his mouth, and a sound escapes him that he's never heard himself make before. It's sharp, gasping, and in pain, and it keeps happening. Even the water is hurting him, scalding the skin of his back, where he used to be able to feel the strong, powerful contractions of his wings, but for some reason, he can't figure out what to do about it.  
  
The door to the bathroom must have opened at some point, but Castiel had not heard it. He only notices something has changed when Dean sits on the edge of the tub, apparently not caring how near he is to the increasingly scalding water that is pounding down onto both his reaching arm and Castiel's back. When Dean adjusts the bathtub knob, though, the unbearable heat shifts to a softer, tolerable warmth. Cas is grateful, but he can't get the right words out to say so.  
  
"Cas, hey, hey, shhh." Though Castiel is sure he's convinced Dean not to touch him, when Dean's hand lands on his neck, Castiel finds himself swaying closer, until his face has burrowed against Dean's knee. Dean's touch, steady and sure, does not waver, no matter how uncontrollably Castiel is shaking, nor how many strange, scared sounds he's making. They're both getting thoroughly soaked, but Dean doesn't seem to care, and Castiel presses his head so hard against Dean's leg that his face starts throbbing against the rough, wet denim.  
  
"It's _my_ fault," Castiel can hardly talk around the heaving breaths caving in his lungs, the sensation distressingly present after so much time feeling almost nothing. Shock is leaving him, and all he can see is the plummet of his entire family, so many of them dying where they had landed. "All these people, a-and my _family_ , all because of _me_." Under his hands, the water is still running red, but it's disappearing. He can barely even see it anymore. "Dean, why am _I_ still _alive_?"  
  
"Don't. God... _Cas_... don't say that." Dean slides a single leg into the tub first, then the rest of himself follows, his arms extending to let Cas lean into him. Castiel can't possibly be permitted to accept this, but he can hardly breathe, and Dean is close enough, and the tub is straining to fit them separately, so he shoves himself hard up against Dean's chest, putting his forehead down on Dean's shoulder and his elbow on Dean's knee to help push himself even closer. Perhaps this craving for being calmed is a human instinct, or perhaps it is one Castiel has always had, but simply never indulged. Either way, Dean's arm wraps around his waist in response, and Castiel holds on tightly, as the falling world seems to take on the form of water droplets, instead of meteoric fire.

  
"Cas," Dean continues. His voice is a soft murmur under the loud spattering of shower water hitting the porcelain sides of the tub, and his hand, rubbing up Castiel's back, is soft. "Man, you... you gotta hang on. I can't — " Again, Dean sucks in a breath, and his following words are left unspoken. Instead, he puts his chin down on Castiel's heaving shoulder, trying with all his might to hold Castiel's convulsing body still. When Dean takes in a breath large enough to push against Castiel's ribs, Castiel feels Dean's own lungs might be struggling to hold air in them, but Dean still remains steady: a rock in the storm. "Just... breathe. Come on, Cas. It's okay."  
  
“Your... your clothes,” Castiel gasps, because this seems very important. Dean's barely gotten dry from being out in the rain all night, and yet here he is, getting drenched and not saying a single word about it.  
  
“I've got other clothes.”  
  
Castiel has never felt so guilty or unworthy. He tries to pull back, remembering Dean's fatigue and believing he has already taken enough from the man for one lifetime, but Dean's arms tighten even more around him. Dean pulls Castiel closer, their chests resting near enough for Castiel to feel the warm echoes of two heartbeats between them, in contrast to the thousands of tiny, pounding water droplets on his back. As an angel, Castiel could have escaped this instantly, could have broken bones or wrenched his way free from all but a very few, notable threats to his well-being, but... as a human who cannot get his muscles to listen to him, he is too weak to try, and he thinks he might not even want to.  
  
In the darkness of Dean's shoulder, Castiel sees the burning of the sky as his siblings fell: wine red and jagged gold, thousands of angels — and yet he knew there were _more_ , elsewhere, beyond his limited, human vision — plummeting to the earth. He feels, also, the metallic chill of shackles around his arms, and the spiking burn of the cut throbbing on his neck. The pain is reminiscent of the staggering panic he'd felt when Metatron had held him down and cut his throat, leaving him spilling open and vulnerable before the cruelty of a brother he'd thought he could trust.  
  
"I... why?" Hands clutching feebly against Dean's clothed sides, Castiel gives up on trying to get away and lets the pain wash through him in unyielding waves, each one more jagged than the last. He can't seem to stop shuddering as water streams down all all around him, gathering in swirling waves around his bare feet and Dean's boots.  
  
Still touching Castiel gently as warm water flows around them both, Dean sighs. "That question'll kill you, Cas. Don't do that to yourself."  
  
Dean's hand on Castiel's back, accompanied by the steady patter of lukewarm water, is soothing, and Castiel's throat feels swollen when he realizes that, after this moment has ended, he will probably never, ever have this kind of support again. At this thought, his chest squeezes, and it's once again harder to breathe. He curls his arms around Dean's back, trying to absorb the offered warmth and genuine care while he still can. Castiel remembers what it once felt like to lose his mind, and fears he is perhaps losing it again. His penance will _never_ be complete. He will never be able to — he couldn't _ever_ make up for —  
  
He realizes he's started crying, each wave of pain worse than the last. There are _so many_ awful things he's done, so many things he can never forgive himself for. Still, Dean is here. Dean is trying to give him _peace_ , so that he'll feel _better_ , yet this is somehow making him feel _worse_ , even though Castiel doesn't want to be let go of.  
  
"Cas." Dean keeps touching him, gentle hands now rubbing soft circles into the tense, damp muscles of Castiel's back, where his clothes have soaked through and are sticking to him all over. "Easy, easy. C'mon, let it go."  
  
The advice trembles through Castiel's chest, warm and terrifying all at once. He doesn't _want_ to forget what he's done, wants to remember it and _suffer_ for it, but then Dean's hands come up to his head, and Cas' eyes slip shut against his will. Hands touching his hair feel different when threading through water. It's... calming, and something Castiel's never experienced before. His entire body loosens, leaning into the solid, steady weight of Dean's chest. Dean keeps holding him, nails scraping up and down Castiel's spine and into his hair, creating a grounding line from his spine, all the way up to the headache beginning to pound in Castiel's skull. The tenderness... is almost too much to bare.  
  
"You shouldn't be here," Castiel tries, feebly, but he can't get any strength into his words, and defeats his own point by locking his wrists together behind Dean's back, so that maybe Dean _won't_ be able to get away. "You... sh-should leave me."  
  
"That's not gonna happen." Dean shakes his head, even as he begins gently rocking Castiel, back and forth. It's uncomfortable, the small, porcelain tub not allowing much movement from side to side, but Dean keeps doing it, and, beyond Castiel's comprehension, something about the subtle, repetitive motion makes Castiel's lungs slow their desperate gasping, until he can finally just rest against the shelter of Dean's body, breathing against the wet skin behind Dean's ear and trying to piece himself back together.  
  
They're quiet for several minutes after that, Dean's wet hair and cheek leaning into Castiel's in the hissing water, and while Castiel can't see Dean's face, he somehow knows there is nothing hostile to be found there. Dean is doing this to be kind, and he would not be here if he wasn't _willing_ to be. Dean is not the kind of man who would waste effort pretending to comfort anyone.  
  
The water still falling onto his body in calming waves, Castiel feels his hands slacken from their desperate grip on the back of Dean's shirt, though they still shiver beyond his control as they slide to rest more calmly against Dean's sides. Ducking his head to hide in the damp cotton covering Dean's shoulder, Castiel takes a small, shallow breath, and when he exhales between their chests, Dean does not flinch. The water falling on them is slowly losing its heat, or maybe Castiel is just getting used to it. He knows the human body can adapt to varying temperatures and other stimuli, given enough exposures. This will be something new that he will have to get used to.  
  
“You're thinking too hard,” Dean mutters, with a sigh. Between their bodies, there is shadow and cold water, but it is somehow not alarming. Castiel feels an unusual calm spread through him that feels something like safety. It is almost painful, to know someone cares enough to protect him in this way.  
  
“I didn't know that was possible.” Castiel rests, his eyes shut for so long he almost forgets where he is. Meanwhile, the sound of water falling on porcelain drowns out any unpleasant noise from outside the motel room. He knows there will be many unbearable things to deal with when he leaves the sanctity of this tub, and that any one of them may well have the power to ruin him. He finds he is so afraid to leave.  
  
"Hey," Dean murmurs, his hand rubbing firmly against muscles in Castiel's upper back that he hadn't realized were tensing up again. "Stop. You're..." Dean hesitates, then says, his hand moving with deliberate slowness across the space where once there were massive, yet hidden wings, "... look, we're gonna get you home again, okay?"  
  
It's yet another sincere offer for Castiel to stay with the Winchesters, and he nods feebly. “All right.”  
  
Dean's body tenses, and while Castiel is trying to figure out why ( _Did he say something wrong?_ ), Dean puts his hands on Castiel's sides and starts pushing him away. Water dripping from his chin, Dean smiles tightly, just before drawing himself onto the lip of the tub. This leaves Castiel sitting alone, save for Dean's shin, which is still pressed against him in the tub. Hating himself for it, Castiel puts a hand on the top of Dean's shoe and tries to calm down the utter panic that he is about to be left behind, even though it would not be inappropriate for Dean to do so. The water continues to fall on Castiel's head, getting into his eyes now that he is looking up at Dean.  
  
"Lean back," Dean says, only. He can't seem to meet Castiel's eyes as he grabs a small bottle off the edge of the sink. "I'm gonna get the blood out of your hair, and get your neck taken care of."  
  
Castiel's hand tightens against the wet cuff of Dean's jeans, and they match gazes for several seconds before Castiel nods, abruptly. “Yes, I... okay.”  
  
Guided by Dean's hand nudging his shoulder, Castiel settles against the back wall of the tub. Water still falling on them both, Castiel hears the sound of Dean's hands rubbing together, just before a gentle touch returns to Castiel's head, and he smells raspberries and apples in the hotel shampoo.  
  
For a little while, Dean just keeps kneading his hands through Castiel's hair, until Castiel feels like he's going to fall asleep again. At a certain point, Dean cups his hands to rinse out the shampoo suds, a palm held above Castiel's eyes to protect them from the sudsy water streaming down Castiel's ears and shoulders. He then turns his attention to the cut on the side of Castiel's neck. When Dean's fingertips brush his jaw, Castiel hesitates for only a moment before baring his injured neck, so that Dean can see it better. Though it hurts, and though Castiel flinches when Dean's hand first touches it, Dean is careful with him and moves slowly, easing away Castiel's reignited panic by being responsive to his flinches and shushing him with soft sounds whenever Castiel tenses up. Soon, the dried blood around Castiel's collar has been completely cleaned away.  
  
Finally, Dean shuts off the water and offers him a hand. Without the sound of water tapping against the tub and floor, Dean's lowered voice sounds louder, echoing slightly in the moist air of the tiled bathroom when he says, "You ready to get out?"  
  
Castiel isn't entirely sure, but Dean is looking at him with such an open expression of hope and worry that Castiel is afraid to let him down. Besides, he is still so tired, and so is Dean, and it is so obvious to _both_ of them that it would be foolish to indicate otherwise.  
  
"And... you?" Castiel asks, as his heat-weakened hand closes around Dean's and he allows himself to be pulled up. "You are... tired. Are you going to sleep soon?" His legs feel wobbly, but no longer from shaking. Perhaps he is hungry. It's an odd sensation to catalog. He still feels like something is pushing against the back of his eyes, but at least it is no longer spilling out of him.  
  
Dean frowns as he helps Castiel over the lip of the tub, but it doesn't look like incrimination; it's more like Dean is pondering something he finds unpleasant. "Uh," Dean says, "can you _handle_ me sleeping?" With a swallow, he picks up a towel and starts walking out of the bathroom, his shoulders tense around his neck, and Castiel, after a moment, follows him.  
  
"What do you mean? Your sleep has no effect on..." Castiel's words grow trapped, and he swallows sharply. "Oh." _Of course._ He understands. "I have made you... concerned... for me."  
  
Castiel expects a sarcastic quip, perhaps a pop culture reference that he will not understand, but while he is bracing for the inevitable discomfort of not knowing what Dean is trying to say to him, Dean only says, "Yeah," and leaves it at that. Dean has crouched to dig through his bag, and Castiel sees him pulling out clothes. Dean then points over his shoulder, his other hand clutching what he's gathered. "Hey, listen, you might want to go dry yourself off."  
  
"Oh." Castiel looks down at himself, noting the way his clothes are dripping onto the carpet. He'd honestly forgotten he was standing around in just a shirt and underwear, and while his undergarments are boxers that sufficiently cover everything a human might consider inappropriate, he is suddenly afraid he has already failed at being human in some intrinsic, vital way that involves modesty and keeping one's self properly covered when in the company of others. "Of course. I'll go... do that."  
  
“Yeah, stay in there for a few minutes. I'm gonna get dressed out here.”  
  
Once he's returned to the towel rack in the bathroom, Castiel takes a few deep breaths, wondering at the scraped-out feeling that is returning to his stomach. Quickly, he unbuttons and peels off his outer shirt, then throws off the white t-shirt beneath it. He keeps his boxers on while drying off his chest, and flinches violently when Dean's head peeks around the doorway, which Castiel realizes he's left open.  
  
"I'm sorry," Castiel chokes out, even though Dean doesn't look upset. "I'm partly unclothed. I should have closed the door — "  
  
"Cas, it's fine." Keeping his eyes averted, Dean takes a single step into the bathroom, only to put a set of pants and a loose shirt on the edge of the sink, before he backs out of the bathroom, leaving Castiel alone. "Remember the bees? I don't give a crap."  
  
Castiel had forgotten the bees. That particular, awful time seems so long ago. He holds his towel closer to his chest, head feeling light and wobbly on his neck. There are so many things he would be happier to forget, yet at the same time, his experiences with forgetting what he has been through have made him wary of even _wanting_ such a thing. He has to put a palm against his forehead for a moment before the phantom throbbing in his eyes goes away, burdened by the memory of cold steel slipping into his eye sockets and changing who he is.

How much of his life has been taken from him? How much has he done that he does not even remember?  
  
He dresses quickly into the sweat pants and loose t-shirt that Dean had brought him, though his hair remains damp, no matter how hard he scrubs at it. Making note of this human trait, he gives up, and then, deciding he's spent enough time in the bathroom, he walks out of it. Dressed now in a fresh pair of jeans and a tan, long-sleeved shirt, Dean is flapping out Castiel's coat, then digging through its pockets until he has found his own phone in them.  
  
Wanting to continue their conversation, Castiel offers, "I've seen you without external coverings, too." Dean's immediately pinched expression makes Castiel backtrack. "Uh... when I pulled you from hell. You were. Pure. Or, well, what that means is that you were unencumbered by clothing before I pieced you back together, and — "  
  
"Wow, Cas." Sitting on the edge of the bed, Dean puts his head in both hands, his phone pressed to his temple in one hand. His shoulders heave, but while Castiel is wondering if he should be concerned, Dean pulls back from his hands and looks up, a laugh coming out of his throat. "Way to be smooth."  
  
Castiel feels like his head is going to catch fire. Today, he has cried, been held, and, now, he is half-soaked and not sure where he is supposed to sit down, or even if he is supposed to talk about any of these things. He can't even figure out if this is something he would want, or if he wants to pretend the moments before this had not happened. He is finding the choices set before him to be overwhelming, and wonders if this is what embarrassment feels like. It's strangely central to the front of one's face, and very warm.  
  
"I was not trying to be lewd," he offers, weakly, and Dean, surprising Castiel utterly, pats the bed beside him.  
  
"Sit down, you weirdo. We're gonna watch some TV on my phone."  
  
Taking a deep breath, Castiel decides he could not cause any harm by doing this, and so he climbs up beside Dean, who is moving back to lean against the bed's headboard. Once beside Dean, Castiel considers his options for a moment, before Dean puts an arm around Castiel's shoulders and pulls him closer, so that their sides are touching.  
  
Dean doesn't explain himself, and Castiel, after a moment, rests his cheek against Dean's shoulder. With his damp hair dripping onto Dean, Castiel watches him scroll through menus on his phone. As Castiel watches, Dean opens up a pre-downloaded program: _Looney Tunes_ , of all the shows Castiel never would have expected _Dean_ to have available at a moment's notice. Before he can ask about this, Dean offers an answer.  
  
"Yeah, it's for you. You've been going through it for a while, and just thought you might need it someday." He doesn't meet Castiel's eyes, and Castiel recognizes the look as Dean being embarrassed by the confession, even though it makes something in Castiel's stomach feel utterly warmed. "Don't, Cas. Really, just. I'm tired, okay?"  
  
To be silent after having had so much noise in his head is an easy thing to agree to. Against Dean's shoulder, Castiel shuts his eyes for a brief moment and simply breathes.  
  
Dean makes a non-committal noise: a hum that vibrates through both of their throats due to their closeness, and Castiel sinks deeper into his side. The bed under them is soft, and the particular episode is one that Castiel remembers watching with the Winchesters on an earlier case. He's not sure why something in his stomach hurts at the realization that Dean must have taken special note of Castiel's being fond of it.  
  
"Dean," he says, into the softness of the room, “thank you.” Outside, it's daylight, but the mood has the sleepy cadence of night, and the curtains are thick enough that hardly any outside light is getting into the red and gold room.  
  
"You're welcome." Dean is yawning, his eyes clearly bloodshot, now that Castiel is close enough to notice. Over time, Dean's grip on his phone starts to weaken, Dean's eyelids also seeming to struggle to stay open. When his head starts leaning back about halfway through the first episode, Dean flinches roughly, and, with a particularly sluggish blink, he hands his phone to Castiel's waiting hand.  
  
"M'fallin' asleep here,” Dean mumbles. He looks almost embarrassed about this, though Castiel doesn't know why. Humans need sleep, and Dean has been going without it for too long. “Look,” Dean says, continuing, “wake me if you need something, all right? There's more episodes on here if you want 'em."  
  
Castiel agrees to this with a small nod, already feeling Dean's body starting to loosen beside him. Curled around Dean's side and still feeling internally bruised, Castiel watches the bright colors of _Looney Tunes_ flash across the screen, each character unique and representative of various, entertaining human attributes in a state of excess. Dean, meanwhile, slips into sleep beside Castiel, seeming utterly uncaring of where he is, or who he's fallen asleep nearby.  
  
As Castiel contemplates this, his chest starts feeling tight again, and he pulls away to breathe in the space away from Dean.  
  
Perhaps he's had enough comfort. Castiel is certainly unused to it, and he wonders if such limits of tolerance are normal. He's having trouble taking in any more. His back is bothering him; even though it doesn't hurt, the emptiness is... unsettling.  
  
Castiel gets up, and then pulls the edge of the blanket over Dean's body, so that Dean will stay warm as he sleeps. After this, Castiel retreats to the other bed, where he untangles the complicated way the blankets are tucked and then burrows himself under them. He keeps watching _Looney Tunes_ under their shade for another hour, the volume turned low and his hair drying against a starchy, cotton pillow with a fake crown on it, until, finally, he simply can't concentrate any longer.  
  
When sleep hits him for the second time that day, it's unexpected, and Castiel is too weary to fight it off.

.

T.B.C.

.

2013.10.09

[.](https://dustlines.livejournal.com/31336.html)

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	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel and Dean set out on a strange and disorienting road trip.
> 
> **Excerpt** :  
>  In the Impala, Dean chews the half of a protein bar that he hadn't given Cas and feels like complete crap for having never given Castiel's pain enough attention. He thinks he's missed noticing a lot of his friend's suffering, and wonders if Cas resents him at all for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **TW** : some disturbing nightmare imagery at beginning of chapter. Involves body horror and descriptions of _dreamed-about_ corpses, from canon scenes when Naomi was brainwashing Castiel to kill false Deans, as well as when the angels were falling from Heaven.
> 
> Skip to "Cas, you gotta move" if you'd like to coast past this dream sequence.

  
Nightmares plague Castiel's sleep. He dreams of god and snakes, a vast forest full of dying trees, and a voice whispering of its need to be found. He dreams, also, of Naomi's white room, a place where he has so often been afraid. In the chair beside him there, one of a thousand Dean clones — despite the knife in his throat — is smiling pleasantly at Cas. The wall behind the fake Dean is melting like candle wax, and in the glass reflections of Naomi's desk, Castiel sees the river from Purgatory that he remembers wanting to drown himself in. The floor is vibrating, and when Castiel looks down, he hears the vibrations rise to the sounds of screaming: high pitched and _buzzing_ in his skull.  
  
“Stop this!” he yells, though to whom, he does not know. When he jumps from his chair, the false Dean's eyes follow him. Castiel is alarmed by the doppelganger's presence, for Naomi has never let any of the Deans she creates into this room. She prefers to let them decompose in the same area, the stench of fake corpses apparently no less gruesome than real ones. It's overpowering, that scent, and Castiel has taken to not breathing when Naomi is forcing him to kill another one of these false Deans.  
  
Without warning, Castiel is no longer standing. He is on his back and bound to a table, with metal cutting into his wrists and the night sky wide open above him. His family is plummeting down to the earth, their hair and skin on fire, their bodies about to be broken. They are screaming, and though Castiel is trying to beat his wings to save them, his body is too shredded to fly with. All he can do is lie there, powerless, and watch them fall.  
  
“Hey, Cas?” The fake Dean, a knife still in his throat, bends over the table that Castiel is strapped to. Gold and red light flickers over his skin as the fireballs descend, about to strike them both. Under firelight, this fake Dean looks a lot like the real one did in Hell. “What do you think it's gonna take to end you for good, huh?” The fake Dean leans closer, and his breath is hot against Castiel's ear when he hisses, “Maybe it'll stick if _you_ do it.”  
  
The metal table is vibrating, Castiel's teeth chattering with it, and the night sky above is turning a bright, electric white. He tries to talk, tries to beg Dean not to say that, tries to say he is _barely_ holding on and can't handle _Dean_ asking him questions like that, but when Castiel opens his mouth, he can only moan. Worse, the moan is almost silent: a distant, _soft_ sound that he can barely hear, as though he has swallowed his tongue.  
  
The fake Dean flinches suddenly, protruding knife bobbing against his adam's apple when he swallows, and then he mumbles, “Cas, you gotta move. Cas!”  
  
The white sky turns fuzzy and strange, almost soft, then begins to look merely like white plaster peeking out from peeling, red paint. Castiel's mouth tastes sour, and he smells detergent. Disoriented, he mumbles, “Whe-where do I go?”  
  
“To the other pillow would be good.” Dean's hand reaches beside Castiel's face, and Castiel, awakening far too fast, jolts back in horror. Dean, pulling away, looks apologetic. “Hey, sorry. Your face was crushing my phone.”  
  
With a strangled groan, Castiel struggles onto his hands and knees to push himself upright against the motel bed. His heart is stuttering violently in his chest, and he breathes slowly to calm it down. His eyes, also, feel like they're being sucked out of his head, and he blinks until they feel less unstable, the reds and golds of the motel room slowly coming into focus. In Dean's hand, Dean's phone is lit up and vibrating, either a call or a text message coming through.  
  
“Phone service has resumed?” Castiel chokes, and his throat is raw and sore, as though he's been inhaling a corrosive acid in his sleep. His blankets are tangled around him in giant, constrictive swirls, some of them hanging off the side of the bed, while a beam of soft, afternoon daylight enters the room through a slat in the dark red and gold-rimmed curtains.  
  
Dean plops himself down on the side of Castiel's messy bed, and Castiel, after a moment, lies back down and covers his eyes, his spine sinking deep into the mattress as he groans, unhappy with the human state of waking. A headache is swelling between the skin of his forehead and his skull, and it gets worse every time he breathes in. Beside Castiel, Dean is fiddling with his phone, tapping the plastic screen.  
  
“Texts are getting through,” Dean says, “Calls aren't.” He shifts on Castiel's bed, hands still tapping lightly against the plastic phone. Castiel is trying to forget his dreams and all that they represent about his current reality when Dean adds, “You move in your sleep more than _anyone_ I've ever seen.”  
  
Castiel puts his hands down by his sides and stares up at the ceiling, which is blessedly devoid of anything falling on him, unless the peeling paint decides it wants to randomly speed up its descent. “I don't know what to do with that information,” he says, and Dean huffs in a way that could express either amusement or misery, and possibly both. Looking at Dean's furrowed expression does not clarify the matter for Castiel.  
  
“You don't need to... 'do' anything about that, Cas. It just... _is_ , you know?”  
  
Castiel doesn't feel well, and the world is lurching like water in a glass. Though it's no longer happening, nor could happen again, his memories of cold metal on his hands and cutting into his eyes are proving vivid and difficult to shake off.  
  
“No, Dean, I don't 'know.'” The idea that Castiel, unused to being human, should have _any_ pre-existing knowledge of his own 'normal' sleeping habits is borderline insulting. “How could I?”  
  
Careful not to knock Dean to the floor, Castiel kicks off his tangled blankets, his bare feet stumbling when they hit the burgundy carpet. Now that he's upright, there's a fizzy, sharp feeling of numbness crawling down the arm that had been under his pillow, and when he shakes the limb, the sensation gets worse, as though there's a sparkling, white static inside his skin. Holding his breath, he takes a few steps towards the bathroom, pausing when his entire body tries to sway too far to the left.  
  
“Um,” Dean is standing from the bed, slowly, “I think maybe we should get you something to eat.”  
  
The thought makes Castiel's stomach recoil, though his chest pulls oddly in longing. Now that he's noticing it, his gut is making a low, curdling noise. It's painful, though only barely. He can ignore it if he chooses to. “I'm not hungry. Do you have a toothbrush I can use?”  
  
“We can buy you a toothbrush, too.” Still holding his phone, Dean tries to follow him into the bathroom, but Castiel moves faster to escape him. “Cas! Hey, I am trying to _help_ you. This is all _new_ to you. You could at least — ”  
  
When the door slams in Dean's face, Castiel feels the briefest sensation of guilt before he is on his knees, the coiling sensation in his gut surging upwards. He almost doesn't manage to get his head inside the toilet bowl before he begins to throw up. There's nothing inside his stomach but acid and bad coffee from the hospital where he'd acted as false priest for the victims of yet another one of his _massive_ mistakes, and it all hurts when it comes back up. It seems to go on forever, or at least what a human could feel justified in labeling as forever.  
  
By the time he's done, he is holding onto the condensation-slick sides of the toilet bowl and shuddering with both heat and fatigue, a sheen of sweat slippery on his neck and arms. He slumps against the side of the sink and looks up through burning eyes to see Dean has once again opened the bathroom door without asking first. Castiel is sure this violates protocols of human privacy (in fact, he can recall a rather vivid conversation he'd had with Dean about that _very topic_ several years ago), but Castiel is too weary to care.  
  
“I should not have done that,” Castiel tries to apologize. “You were being kind, and I responded rudely.” Castiel's mouth tastes disgusting, worse than before, and he wipes it down with his hand. “I need to get used to... to dreaming.”  
  
In the doorway, Dean loosely clutches the doorknob, his feet not quite breaching the threshold to the room. “No,” Dean says, “it's... it's fine. We're good.”  
  
“Are you sure?” The foul stench of Castiel's own vomit is in the air, and he lowers the toilet lid and leans his elbow on it, as though his weight could suppress evidence of his stress. “You're not even asking what I've _done_. Surely, you saw the _sky_. How can we be _good_?”  
  
“I don't know if I wanna know, Cas.” Dean is frowning, but his eyes look worried. “A lot went down last night, man.”  
  
“You should be told what happened.” Castiel licks his lips: they feel dry, and he finds he wants to stick a fingernail under the peeling skin and rip it all off. Instead, he balls his fists until his nails bite into the tender skin of his palms. “And... I'll _tell_ you, when I can... handle it. It didn't... occur... as... as you might think.”  
  
“Yeah,” Dean sucks in a breath, then looks to the side and nods. “I'm starting to get that sense.”  
  
Once again, Castiel wonders if he's said something wrong when Dean's arms lift to cross around his chest. It seems more like a self-protective gesture than a defensive one, though, as though Dean is worried about the contents of his chest falling out of him. Dean is leaning against the doorway like he's hoping to be absorbed by it, and part of the door itself is blocking the space between them.  
  
The forced distance makes Castiel's hands shake, just slightly. He honestly doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing right now. He thinks he should tell Dean everything, but the thought of doing so makes him dizzy. Unnervingly, he's not sure he could currently survive a conversation about Heaven, or Metatron, or Naomi, much less what they had done to him, and, in case of the former, what he'd done to it. It'd only be words, but perhaps words are heavier when one is human and wholly vulnerable to their impact. Even the _thoughts_ of words are proving frightening.  
  
“Look,” Dean says, after a moment. His voice has softened, and Castiel thinks Dean must have noticed Castiel's obvious distress. “First thing's first. I've got Sam and Charlie figuring out whatever it was that called me last night, pretending to be you. I don't see that it's bothering us now, but with the life we lead, it's still good to check in with that sort of thing. Everything else, we can come back to.”  
  
Castiel takes a deep, slow breath, and then nods. The floor beneath him is chilled, save for the spaces where his own clothes are still strewn about where he'd discarded them before.  
  
“Vomiting is unpleasant,” he says, even if he knows it's not a direct continuation of what Dean has just said. “What I feel is...” Castiel can't find a word to describe whatever is churning in his stomach, alongside the sudden emptiness. Instead, he settles on, “...immense.”  
  
Still leaning against the doorframe, but coming no closer to Castiel, Dean stares down at the phone in his hand. The phone's screen has gone dark, but Dean's attention seems drawn to it all the same. “Cas,” Dean says, with a note of hesitation. His eyes flicker up, slowly, as though they could lower back to the phone at any moment. “Is there anything you... need?”  
  
“Likely so, but I can't define it.” On shaky legs, Castiel drags himself up from the floor. Twisting the peeling gold faucet of the sink until it gurgles and spits out a steady, clear stream, he cups his palms and then splashes his face with the cool water. The water running down his neck is soothing, though his jaw feels rougher than it did the night before. “A... toothbrush, for now.”  
  
Again, Dean seems disappointed, and Castiel knows he's missed something crucial. Before he can ask Dean if his question had specific elements that Castiel was supposed to respond to, Dean is already walking away from the doorway, telling Castiel they need to get ready to leave. Castiel, meanwhile, peels off the bandage on his neck so he can tend to the cut beneath, washing the injury carefully with a bar of motel room soap that smells of artificial honey and a hint of chamomile.  
  
Head pounding as he covers his neck with a new bandage (being damaged and unable to heal quickly is _terrifying_ ), Castiel leans over the still-running sink. The bathroom door remains half-open behind him, and though he is aware Dean could look in at any moment, Dean seems to feel no pressing need to do so. Instead, Dean walks around in the main portion of the motel room, shoving together their few possessions, as well as probably stealing a few others.  
  
Dean's task does not take very long, silence filling up the motel room after a while, and when Castiel leaves the bathroom, he is surprised to find Dean sitting on the edge of his bed, leaning over his knees with his face in his hands. It's been about a minute since the room went silent, and Castiel wonders if Dean landed this way the moment he stopped having something to do.  
  
“Are you all right?” Castiel asks, softly. Though he does not expect to receive a serious answer, Dean's strained, answering grin when he looks up is still painful to see.  
  
“Dandy. You ready to go?” Pulling the strap of his duffel bag over his shoulder, Dean tosses Castiel's coat to him and heads for the door. There is a slight limp to the way he's moving, but Dean is making obvious efforts to conceal it, so Castiel pretends he has not noticed. Dean rarely likes his weaknesses pointed out to him.  
  
In the quiet of his own unpleasant thoughts, Castiel simply shrugs his coat on and follows Dean outside.  
  


  
Dean thinks that, as supply runs go, this one has the potential to be among the weirdest ones he's ever been on. As they head off to find a store, Dean hands his phone to Castiel, who sits in a slight hunch in the passenger's seat, like he's favoring his back, and then watches out of the corner of his eye as Sam and Castiel start having a conversation via texting that Dean is _dying_ to know the contents of. Castiel doesn't look up much once the conversation starts, his shoulders low and his eyelashes casting small shadows over already dark circles under his eyes. His hands on Dean's phone are sluggish but careful, mindful to neither break anything, nor cause any kind of perceived harm to Dean or any of Dean's possessions. There's a weird _fragility_ between the two of them now, and Dean feels pressure building like a storm coming closer.  
  
Because neither of them are speaking and the radio is not working, Dean tries to fill the empty space with humming that sounds nervous even to him, but he finds himself calmed by it, and Castiel doesn't call him out on anything, so Dean does not stop until he's hummed his way through at least three Metallica songs. The only other sound that fills the car is the rush of wind through the shattered back window, and the smaller hissing through the cracks in all the other windows. It's still pretty loud, though.  
  
The world outside of the damaged Impala is a mess, so it takes them a while to find a decent place to shop. On the way, they encounter a few fallen angels, many wearing nondescript suits and drifting aimlessly in the middle of the road. The fallen angels scatter whenever Dean honks his horn at them. Meanwhile, Castiel remains withdrawn and unhelpful about the matter, mostly unable to even look at his family. Most of the fallen angels look human, and others... not so much. They all wear similar expressions of terror or rage, though they don't seem to be causing any harm. Around them all, houses have been uprooted, vines the thickness of cars jutting through lawns and gardens, and people are gathering in clusters, seemingly at random. Some are talking to the angels, while others avoid them at all costs. Gigantic red and yellow flowers, their blossoms at least three feet wide, are everywhere.  
  
“They're from the mesozoic era,” had been Castiel's response when Dean muttered something caustic about the flowers and how thoroughly they blocked certain parts of the road. “Their extinction preceded the extinction of the dinosaurs, as they had been a primary food source for them.”  
  
Dean had tried to pull more conversation from Castiel, asking how he knew that kind of stuff, but Castiel only remained silent, his eyes glued to the phone in his lap, and Dean was left disconcertingly reminded that his friend is quite possibly older than dirt, if not the entire planet. Thinking of this makes Castiel's side of the car seem heavier, but Castiel's quiet need for a friend to keep texting him back makes him seem human all over again.  
  
“Gardening's going to become a lucrative career path,” Dean predicts out loud, and is pleased to see the corner of Cas' mouth twitch, just slightly.  
  
Cas nods. “So it would seem.” He pauses, then adds, "How is your chest? You are favoring it."  
  
Dean rubs a hand up his sternum, feeling his nerves light up with pain behind the pressure of his thumb. "Eh," He shrugs, because it's not like Cas can heal it anyway, "I've had worse."  
  
Even the retail store they finally stop at is not entirely untouched by the fall of angels and their Grace. A pine tree covered in building debris has broken through the store walls, like Christmas trying to invade early this year, but the tree is only in a small part of the store, and that's apparently not enough for the store to close. Dean reaches up to droop a piece of string over one of the tree's branches like some kind of ghastly, low-budget ornament, and as he laughs at what he's done, he wonders if he is about to break down himself.  
  
He does not spend much time with the tree, instead wanders around the store in pursuit of Castiel, who seems surprisingly capable of finding his own way to what he needs. Trying not to feel useless, Dean helps out by holding the basket and letting Castiel get used to not being stingy about what he picks out for himself.  
  
“They're not _my_ credit cards,” he tells Cas, and then feels guilty when he finds the store's ability to process non-cash orders has broken down. They have to leave behind the pie, because Dean outright refuses to let Cas walk out without clean socks, but the cashier on duty lets them keep their single cups of coffee without paying for them because the crumpled dollar bills Dean had handed her had lit up a deep well of pity in her eyes.  
  
“Things are rough out there,” she'd said, as she'd “forgotten” to ring up Dean's bottle of painkillers. “We have to look out for each other, or we're not going to make it.”  
  
Cas had leaned closer and hugged her — friggin' _hugged_ her — and Dean hadn't had the heart to tell him that cashiers usually get freaked out by that sort of thing. Still, he and Cas successfully left the store with supplies for the Impala, plus a new toothbrush, deodorant, a half-decent razor, and a gigantic chicken sub that Castiel ended up eating so quickly that Dean could scarcely imagine how hungry he must have been before getting his hands on it. In the Impala, Dean chews the half of a protein bar that he hadn't given Cas and feels like complete crap for having never given Castiel's pain enough attention. He thinks he's missed noticing a lot of his friend's suffering, and wonders if Cas resents him at all for that.  
  
As they sky starts darkening again, they finish the supplies run with a minor act of vandalism. From a truck that's been destroyed by a cluster of waxy, big-leaved vines, Dean teaches Castiel how to siphon fuel from one gas tank to another. When the Impala's tank is full again, as well as a tarp carefully taped over the broken back window, they get back onto the road, having decided that there's no point in putting off getting back to Kansas any longer. Dean's phone, recharging via the Impala's cigarette lighter, sits quietly on the seat between them.  
  
“How's Sam doing?” Dean ends up asking, because this seems like safe territory. Cas had mostly clammed up at the mention of almost any other topic since he'd woken up for the second time today. Even saying Metatron's name had thrown Castiel into a stony, almost catatonic silence for nearly twenty minutes, and Dean's in no rush to do that again. Dean still doesn't know what _happened_ up there in featherland, but he's at least figured out it left one _hell_ of a mark on Cas.  
  
“Sam is recovering.” On the back of their grocery receipt, Castiel is scribbling something with a pen he'd found in the glovebox. It looks like a drawing of some kind, though in the descending darkness of the sunset, Dean can't make out what the drawing is of. “Charlie and Kevin are also well. They're with him. Charlie claims Sam is intolerable when he's sick. I'm not sure I believe this, as she's made him a lot of soup.”  
  
Dean's chest, still somewhat sore, despite the painkillers he'd taken with his coffee, feels unexpectedly lighter at that. Glancing over, he grins. “You met Charlie?”  
  
“She texted me a few times, as you were driving. She seems kind, although — as with you — I don't always understand her cultural references.” Castiel's expression is remorseful when he looks up, staring through the cracked window at a world that looks like it was torn right from the concept art of _Jurassic Park_. “She's happy that you're with me.”  
  
Dean bites his lip, hand tight around the wheel of his battered car. He debates not responding to that, but then decides, to hell with it, and says, “Well, you're not half-bad to have around.”  
  
The look of shame and hesitant gratitude that Cas gives him then is nothing short of depressing, and once again Dean contemplates what an awful person he must be that his closest friend would be surprised to learn Dean values his presence. Dean sniffs, as though he needs to sneeze and is sucking it back, and then thumbs his nose.  
  
Meanwhile, Cas leans back in his seat, sighing in a way that suggests he's getting tired of the weight of the world on his shoulders. “I don't feel like I deserve that.”  
  
There's something in Dean's chest that aches at the lack of returned sentiment, but what Cas has said instead is important, too. “Friendship's not a contest, Cas,” he says, “You're not supposed to have to earn it. People give it to each other because they _care_ about each other. It's not actually too complicated.”  
  
Castiel's brows draw together, his eyes caught in a squint. Still hunched over his drawing as the Impala bumps over uneven gravel, he seems to be absorbing this notion for a long time before he makes a final mark on the receipt and then holds it up. Against the pale, dim blue of the sunset, the paper catches only enough light to brighten it vaguely.  
  
“What do you think?” Castiel's voice is a low murmur, as though he's wondering if, by asking this question, he's breaking some rule of human interaction that he doesn't know about. He probably has no idea that it's normal for a person to want others to see and like the things they've made, or, in failing that, to at least receive kindness for their effort.  
  
A moment later, Castiel hands the receipt to Dean, and their fingertips brush when Dean accepts the drawing, holding it up by the wheel. It strikes Dean that this is the first time he and Cas have touched at all since waking up, which is such a huge contrast from Castiel's morning breakdown in the bathroom that Dean wonders if he should be concerned. After that, when Dean had offered Castiel more direct contact, but Castiel had instead ended up retreating to sleep alone in the other bed, Dean had assumed Castiel needed the space, and so had been trying to give it to him. Still, Dean would be lying if he claimed the itch to reach out and provide some kind of simple comfort for the guy wasn't still droning on repeat in the back of Dean's head. He'd thought for so long that Castiel knew how to comfort _himself_ , and it's been a jarring thing to realize he was wrong.  
  
Still driving, Dean gives the receipt enough of a glance to make out the most important details. Cas has drawn a surprisingly intricate cat, with lush fur, highlights, and perked whiskers. The cat is curled up on a faceless person's lap, and the person is holding the cat close. The drawing makes something in Dean's bruised chest hurt even more, but he's not quite sure what it is.

“It's... nice, Cas.” Dean swallows past the Tylenol-numbed pain in his ribs and smiles, weakly. “I didn't know you could draw.”  
  
Taking the receipt back, Cas holds it in his lap. “You didn't know I could pick out my own socks, either.” There's just enough upward lilt in the dryness of his voice for Dean to realize Cas is making a joke.  
  
“Smartass,” he sighs, and Cas makes a huffing noise that Dean hopes is a laugh. “You want to try sleeping again? Gonna be a long ride back, and you only got a few hours before.”  
  
Cas' lips turn downward, his eyes flickering to Dean's phone on the seat between them. “I don't know if that's wise.”  
  
And Dean can relate to that _so_ much, it's not even funny. He's had so many reasons to avoid the nightmares that he's had pretty much non-stop since he was a small child. Only in the past few months had he started having any kind of regular sleep, and even then, he still dreads shutting his eyes sometimes.  
  
“I'll keep an eye on you,” Dean offers, to which Cas' frown only deepens.  
  
“You're going to... watch me sleep?”  
  
“You've done it for me,” Dean answers promptly, and Castiel flinches. Their conversations about Castiel watching Dean sleep weren't always kind ones, but Dean hopes Cas knows that there were nights when it was most definitely a comfort.  
  
“All right.” With a small nod, Castiel slips his drawing under the weight of Dean's phone, to keep it from fluttering away in the light wind that's slipping through the tarp over the back window. “Wake me if you need me.”  
  
At the word choice — particularly that little 'n' word — Dean's chest tugs uncomfortably. He feels an odd sensation, like a cold, dark oil is pooling into his stomach, which he tries to ignore. Instead, he makes himself laugh a little when he says, “Sure, it's no problem.”  
  
This seems to satisfy Castiel, who settles against the side of the door and shuts his eyes. Dean struggles against a powerful urge to reach out and touch him, instead tightening his grip on the Impala's wheel.  
  
Without Castiel as a distraction, the dark road seems way too quiet, and Dean's thoughts are far too loud.  
  


.

T.B.C.

.

2013.10.09

[.](https://dustlines.livejournal.com/31728.html)

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I'm on Tumblr @[dustlines](https://dustlines.tumblr.com)!

Feedback always appreciated. ❤︎

Thank you for reading!

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that we are in modern-day times, I find it unnerving how accurate the cashier being forced to work through a world-shattering event turned out to be.
> 
> I hope you are all well and staying safe.


	5. Chapter 5

  
Castiel wakes up not from the rumbling, familiar motions of the Impala's driving, but from the sudden absence of the engine's growl. Instead, he hears a subtle chirping of night insects, and feels the drift of a cool breeze, entering the car. When he lifts his head, he sees Dean sitting on the hood of the Impala, lit up by the headlights and crossing his hands behind his neck. He seems distraught, and when Castiel shoves open the Impala's dented side door, he quickly finds out why.  
  
They are parked in front of a collapsed, single-lane bridge, where railroad tracks in the mud have snapped off where the bridge is supposed to start. Visible in the night from golden streetlights and the Impala's headlights only, the old bridge is rusty and ancient, and in the shallow, seemingly black water beneath it, a massive creature has landed. Fireflies have gathered around the fallen angel, their green lights solemn and sad.  
  


  
“Sariel,” Castiel chokes, in response to seeing his brother's true form, made physical. Sariel's body is the size of a small skyscraper, at least 100 meters tall, and is submerged halfway underwater, his once-glowing eyes now gray and dim. His heads are similar in shape to a boar and a t-rex's, his large jaws gone slack in death, and a scent like bonfires and welded metal is hissing up from his corpse. He has sixteen massive wings, dragonfly-transparent, and all of them are drooping without any strength around his body.  
  
“Cas, get back in the car.” Perhaps it's supposed to be a warning, but Dean's voice only spurns Castiel to speed up his attempt to move closer. “You don't need to see this—”  
  
“I _have_ to.” Pushing past Dean, Castiel scrambles to the edge of the cliff and squints through the darkness of night at the body of his fallen sibling, drifting on the water below and surrounded by small, green lights. He realizes he may be about to start hyperventilating, though Dean's hand, jolting forward to snag the fabric covering Castiel's back, makes that urge less intense.  
  
“Cas, you are going to fall off the ledge! Get the hell back—”  
  
“Dean, _back off!_ ”  
  
As though struck physically, Dean jerks away, but his hand quickly returns, now on Castiel's arm. “Cas, you need to get back in the car—”  
  
“Do not tell me what I _need_!” Castiel snatches his arm away.  
  
Dean's face does a rather impressive shift, from terror, to something hurt, to a flash of building anger. “Yeah, you don't need _anything_ , do you?”  
  
When he grabs Castiel's arm again, the grip is so hard that Castiel entire body wrenches to get away. When Castiel's feet slip, pebbles fall from the ledge and crash down over the shattered bridge, banging against rusted metal before splashing into the water below.  
  
“What is _that_ supposed to mean?” Overwhelmed, Castiel shoves Dean backwards, as hard as he can. The strength comes from somewhere deep inside, wrenched from where he used to have Grace, but now has _nothing_ , and Dean topples back and lands, hard, on the wet leaves coating the ground below.  
  
“Cas! What the _hell!_ ” Shaking off the dripping, wet murk of the leaves, Dean clambers to his feet. The expression he gives Castiel is angry, which throws Castiel out of his own anger and into a lost, weak kind of fear.  
  
Castiel stumbles closer, a hand outstretched, terrified by even the thought of causing any harm to Dean. “Wait, Dean, I'm sorry. I didn't—”  
  
“No, you _meant_ that!” Still shaking his arms, Dean starts heading back to the Impala. Pausing, he then takes a step closer to Castiel, and then turns back to the Impala again. He then only stands still, holds his head with muddy palms, and then yells at the ground in frustration. Finally, he whirls back around, shouting, “Cas, you can't do this kind of thing! We can't keep fighting each other _every time_ we get close. It's just _not_ okay!” He points at the ground below his feet, the shadow of his hand shaking in the beam of the Impala's headlights, and he snaps, “Now, get away from that ledge, before you fall and kill yourself!”  
  
The night air is cold, something Castiel only notices now that he's breathing it in too quickly. He looks behind his shoulder to the distant, drowned body of his brother: an angel lacking any vessel with which to have landed on earth safely. Remorse fills Castiel so utterly that he can hardly breathe around it.  
  
Still wobbly on the edge of the cliff, he gestures between himself and Dean. He just wants Dean to _understand_ , though Castiel himself is having trouble getting to that point. Castiel wants to be blamed for this, to be _hated_ for this. But he also wants to be _cared_ for, and he wants to run away. He wants Dean to come closer again, and he wants him to go, because Dean doesn't deserve to be stuck here, helping him. Castiel wants to be held and to hold back, but he also wants to rip apart his own skin, just because having to feel everything his body is calling attention to is _too much_.  
  
“Dean," Castiel yells, "I don't know how to fix _any_ of this!” He points into the river, tasting algae in the air, and smelling the stench of a holy thing decaying. “He will _not_ be the only one! There will be _hundreds_ of my family in similar conditions, all over the world! If they are not already dead, they will be hunted — experimented on! — and all the while, I am _useless_ to defend them! Dean, I am... nothing! What Metatron took from me — I... I...”  
  
His legs lose all strength, and he sits down heavily, one foot scuffing down to hang over the cliff. He grips the edge in shaking hands. Hardly a second passes before Dean crouches behind him, arms sliding tight and warm around Castiel's chest and stomach as Dean braces his legs to drag Castiel backwards through the wet leaves on the ground, only settling when several meters are between Castiel's heels and the cliff's edge. Cas is too weak to resist being moved. He does not even... try to. He even leans into the touch, hanging his head down, near to the point of contact.

_Dean_ , he thinks. It is one word, but it means so much more. How often has Castiel thought of this, yet knew not to seek it?

Castiel does not deserve to be here.  
  
“You're... _not_ useless, Cas,” Dean says, softly breaking him out of his reverie. His chin hooks over Castiel's shoulder, still holding Castiel away from the ledge. "You're just _not_."

Castiel does not have the strength to talk about this.  
  
“ _Dean_ ,” Castiel chokes, into the arm wrapped so, so near to his mouth. He's trembling again, but there's something different about it this time. Along with it, there is a sharp, stabbing pain in his lungs, and his vision is oddly skewed, constricting around the edges. Oh, he should not have begun thinking about this, for now he's panicking, _again_. Dizzy, he grabs one of Dean's arms, holding onto it and feeling like he's falling through the ground. He repeats, “ _Dean_.”  
  
“Cas,” Dean murmurs, up against his ear. His knee digs into Castiel's side, mud all over the arms he has wrapped around Castiel. “Crap, okay... okay, just... hold on.”  
  
Castiel's hands, already tightly clutching one of Dean's arms, deepen their grip. He feels like he's caught on fire, the urge to explode now deep in every atom. His heart is racing, like he's hurtling towards a brick wall. “Dean, what is — ”  
  
“It's probably just a panic attack.” Dean's arms around his body are sure and steady, keeping him close to the ground, but never so low that it feels like being buried. “Sam used to get them, when he was little.”  
  
It's like there's something screaming in Castiel's chest, something small and anxious to get out, and the contact with Dean is exacerbating it. If he could, Castiel would reach in and rip it loose, then send it hurtling over the edge and into the grave of water. Hoping it'll loosen the feeling, Castiel cries out, his voice hoarse and loud, but that only leaves him ashamed and shaking harder, his head bent to rest on the knob of Dean's wrist. What is he going to _do_? He has tainted so many things.  
  
“How did we get here?” Castiel gasps, tongue too numb to slow the rapid surge of his voice, nor the gasp that follows. His breathing is coming hard and fast, his neck wobbly. Dean's hold on him is so _warm_. “We were fine, and now we're... We've been through too much. What _are_ we? What am _I_ supposed to _be_ now?”  
  
Dean doesn't answer, and Castiel thinks this must be one of those human things he has to figure out for himself, like how he prefers to make his coffee, or what kind of sock is most comfortable against his own foot. This must be something no one else can answer for him, and the thought is distressing.  
  
“I've _ruined_ us,” Castiel says, finally, and Dean tucks his chin in to exhale slowly against Castiel's back.  
  
“I don't think so, Cas.” Dean's arms are steady, sealing Castiel in one place. Despite any comparisons to being held down that Castiel could make to recent events, through Naomi, or Metatron, or others, the contact is still unexpectedly reassuring. “We'll just... have to figure that one out.”  
  
It's not a definitive answer, as Castiel had hoped it would be, but it's more than he deserves. He bows his head against Dean's arm, unable to stomach the sight below the bridge anymore. They stay there for a few minutes, sitting in the mud as Castiel feels Dean's steady weight against his back, breathing slowly to try to get Castiel to join him. Eventually, when Castiel's breathing is more controlled, he feels Dean shifting behind him, tugging backwards and away. Feeling a pang of brutal, sharp disappointment, Castiel realizes he doesn't want him to leave, for there is something stirring in his chest, something he knows he has felt before, but has tried hard not to acknowledge, something that leaves him curling his hands firmly around Dean's wrists to try not to lose him so quickly here.  
  
“Cas,” Dean starts, “C'mon, we have to—”

"Don't leave m-"

The blaring ringtone of Dean's phone interrupts both of their thoughts, and Castiel, bleary-eyed, lifts his face from the shield of Dean's arm. Above them, the dark, starry sky is punctuated by small, intermittent flashes of green, and if Castiel were able to pretend like nothing bad has happened because of him — and _to_ him — recently, he could almost call the sight of the fireflies... beautiful.  
  
“My phone,” Dean huffs, seeming annoyed by this. Momentarily, he braces his forehead against the back of Castiel's shoulder, his heavy sigh exhaling frustrated, warm breath against Castiel's back. “Probably... Sam.” Still holding Castiel's shoulders, he starts getting up from the ground. “I guess phone calls are working — ahh!”  
  
Castiel has grabbed Dean's wrist and is dragging him back into the mud. In response to Dean's wide-eyed look, Castiel throws his arms around Dean's neck and pulls him into a fierce, desperately tight hug. "S-something you said, before," he chokes out, and Dean's hand comes up to his back, only to tense up there as Castiel continues, “Perhaps I've given reasons for you to doubt, but... I... I do need you, _too_.”  
  
Against the joined sides of their necks, Castiel feels Dean swallow abruptly, and then clutch the back of Castiel's coat. Maybe Dean had thought Castiel had not heard this confession, back when Castiel was fighting Naomi's mind control and Dean had used this very reason to beg Castiel to fight against it.   
  
“Well... sure,” Dean stammers, and Castiel can tell he's caught him off guard, for Dean laughs nervously when he says, “when I'm getting you over a panic attack, maybe.”  
  
The insinuation is undignified, and inaccurate. Pushing Dean back, Castiel frowns, then sharply protests, “ _No_. I meant generally.”  
  
Dean gets what Castiel believes is referred to as a “caught in the headlights” look, which is fitting, since they are both sitting in the beams of the Impala's headlights.  
  
“Um,” Dean says, but Castiel can't blame him for the lack of eloquence. The phone is continuing to ring inside the car, both loudly and distractingly. “Cas, I'm just a little — ”  
  
Castiel realizes he perhaps should be a little more direct, and so telegraphs his intended follow-up action well in advance, which is why when he holds the back of Deans neck and tilts his head towards him, Dean is able to twist his head out of the way, keeping Castiel's mouth from making contact.  
  
“Cas, _wait!_ No, no, not...” Dean takes a quick, shuddering breath, and his eyes flicker back to the car, and to the still-ringing phone. Not unkindly, he puts his hands on Castiel's shoulders — neither pushing nor pulling, just... _holding_ — and says, while catching Castiel's gaze again, “...there's a dead guy, right _there_.”  
  
“Oh...” Castiel is not sure what else to say, and feels shaken, both by what Dean has said and by the reminder of what has been scaring Castiel. Mind racing, he thinks to himself that he can probably pass this moment off as something else later, but Dean's relatively mild reaction doesn't seem to be suggesting he needs to. Still, Castiel feels his face swarm with heat, and he looks down at the ground.  
  
Dean seems torn as he shifts on his knees, twisting from facing the Impala, to Cas, and then to scrambling up from the ground. Holding onto Castiel's muddy hands, he helps him stand, too. “You... you never said anything!” Dean almost sounds like he's sulking, like this is a profound slight in their relationship that is worse than anything else they've been through. Behind them, Dean's phone keeps ringing, its rock music a jarring contrast in the night.  
  
Castiel puffs back his shoulders, unsure why this particular burden should rest on him alone. “ _You_ never said anything, either.”  
  
“You're an _angel!_ ”  
  
Castiel's not sure what look he gives Dean at that, but it makes Dean twitch a little and start stumbling through the mud to get back to the Impala. With fumbling hands, Dean ducks in to grab his phone, nearly dropping it when he pulls it out of the car.  
  
“Soon as we have a minute, we're coming back to this, Cas,” Dean holds up a hand, gesturing for Cas to return to the car, “because we're _not_ done talking about it.” The phone abruptly stops ringing when Dean answers it, and Castiel, feeling unsteady, joins Dean beside the car.  
  
“Yeah, _what is it?_ ” Dean says into the phone, somewhat bluntly. Castiel can't hear the person on the other side of the phone, but he can see the way Dean's shoulders tense up. “You're kidding me. That's where the phone call came from? Where's he now?” There's another moment of silence, then Dean squeezes his eyes shut and puts a hand to his forehead. “Well, that's just _great_. Thanks for the head's up. Cas and I'll check it out on the way.”  
  
Castiel moves even closer when Dean hangs up, somewhat surprised when Dean only sags in place, hands braced on the top of the Impala. With a strong exhale, Dean then rolls his eyes, his phone lifted to point at Castiel in emphasis.  
  
“Guess who crash-landed in Iowa as a talking tree?”  
  
It's not a question, or even a commentary that Castiel could have predicted, and he pauses where he's standing. The space between him and Dean doesn't feel weird, but it doesn't feel normal, either. “I... need another hint.”  
  
“ _Joshua_.” Dean circles the car, jumping into the driver's seat. Castiel, wanting to hear the rest of this, quickly slides into the passenger seat, and, after a brief struggle to close the bent car door, he looks expectantly at Dean as the man continues, “Apparently, he's asking after _us_. What do you think? Worth the trip?”  
  
Castiel has doubts, but has little desire to voice them. He shrugs his assent, and Dean, nodding back, puts his hand on the back of their combined seat. The edge of his thumb presses against Castiel's back, perhaps incidentally, or perhaps unclearly deliberate. The matter is clarified when Dean meets Castiel's eyes with a brief, wordless swallow, and then Dean merely looks over his shoulder, backs the Impala carefully away from the ledge, and turns the car back onto the main road. Only then, after a small, light drifting of his hand across Castiel's shoulders, does the touch pull away.

"I'm sorry about your family, Cas," Dean mumbles, without looking at him.

Cas only shrugs and looks through the cracked window beside him, feeling wind pool into the car like a living thing. Once, Castiel could have felt himself in similar forms, brushing invisibly across the world, with no knowledge of pain, but here, he is only a man. He can only be himself, and he is hurting.

Though the energy between himself and Dean seems more heightened now, it's not unbearable, even if they don't talk for a very long time.  
  


  
Many hours later, in Cedar Rapids, Indiana, Dean and Castiel are driving through a rural area that seems mostly untouched by the fall of Heaven when Dean heaves a quick sigh and glances over at Castiel. Outside of the windows, the sun has just begun to rise, a soft mist climbing over verdant green hills, upon which there are windmills, spinning on the horizon. He tightens his jaw with a nod, and then pulls the car off onto the gravel shoulder of the road.  
  
Heart beating slightly faster, Castiel steadily matches Dean's gaze. In the distance behind Dean's head, sitting amidst the windmills, is a bright red barn.  
  
“I want you to be okay,” Dean says, very quietly, and Castiel clenches his jaw. Before he can reply, Dean's hand slips around the back of Castiel's neck, and then Dean very, very gently leans forward and presses his mouth to Castiel's.  
  
The timing is somewhat unexpected, but it's also... nice... and... gentle, soothing against the thoughts that Castiel has been quietly tormenting himself over. The kiss is over hardly a second later, here and then gone, and then Dean brings his thumb to rest in the dent of Castiel's chin, now roughened with stubble.  
  
“We've been through too much crap, Cas,” he says, very quietly. In response, Castiel lifts his hand and follows an impulse to gently run it over Dean's short, uncombed hair. In response, Dean sighs and leans into his hand. Somehow, this all feels very normal, and when Dean slips his eyes shut and smiles a little, Castiel smiles a little, too.  
  
They stay like that for a moment, Castiel's hand cupping Dean's ear and Dean's hand resting against the bandage on Castiel's neck, so lightly that it takes Castiel a moment to realize he should be alarmed by being touched where he was hurt, but he isn't, not at all. The windmills spin behind them, a steady _t-thmp, t-thmp_ outside the car, and when Castiel leans forward to begin a second kiss with Dean, he receives no resistance, only warmth and a hand sliding across his jaw, making Castiel shiver.  
  
Their lips play for just a moment, calming and soft, pushing at least some of Castiel's pain behind a kind of hazy shroud of fog, before they both drift back to regard each other in the space between their seats.  
  
They say nothing, only look into each other's eyes. When Dean leans back in his seat, his eyebrows raise briefly, then he grins and runs his thumb down the side of his nose.  
  
“Huh,” he says, and the awe in his voice closely approximates Castiel's own interpretation of the moment.  
  
“Agreed.” Castiel softly touches his own mouth, feeling it tingle under his fingertips. “Huh.”  
  
Dean laughs a little, and then, without further discussion, he starts the Impala back up again and pulls back onto the road. Somehow, it's like nothing has changed, even though Castiel knows nothing is ever going to be quite the same again.  
  
But maybe... that's not so bad a thing.  
  


.

T.B.C.

.

2013.10.09

[.](https://dustlines.livejournal.com/31822.html)

* * *

I'm on Tumblr @[dustlines](https://dustlines.tumblr.com)!

Feedback always appreciated. ❤︎

Thank you for reading!

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

They arrive at Woodward, Iowa in record time, the mid-morning sun bright and warm in the sky. The town is on lockdown of sorts. There are potholes all over the road, and so many of the buildings are scalded or turned to ash by what looks like the remnants of a gigantic blast wave. Mostly, the small town has been evacuated, and the few people who Dean manages to talk to there want little to do with the place.  
  
“Your brother sure knows how to make an entrance, doesn't he?” Dean says, while elbowing Castiel in the side. They've changed into their FBI suits, Castiel's a little loose on his shoulders because it's Dean's spare one, but they are convincing enough to be granted passage over the Des Moines River, where an asymmetrically angled bridge towers high over the water.  
  
“In our true forms, we are not accustomed to being invited to places,” Castiel mumbles, over the sound of distant sirens and the chatter of birds in the tree branches above their heads. They are moving deep into forest territory, where there are tangled roots in curls across the ground, and lichen moss swinging into their faces. “Naturally, we are not sure how to act when we arrive.” He crouches to touch a small flower beneath his palm, and when he does, the flower twitches and bursts into a brilliant, blue blossom, which moves independently for a few seconds before falling to its side and wilting.  
  
“Dude, what the _hell_?” Dean moves closer to Cas, remembering the tree that was absorbing cars on the way to Pontiac, Illinois. Frankly, he's alarmed by any plant that seems to be exhibiting consciousness. “Are we even _safe_ here?”  
  
Castiel frowns, and Dean can read into that how he's not sure even before Castiel opens his mouth and tells him so. Castiel adds, while walking deeper into the trees, “We can minimize our risk by staying close. It's unclear if Joshua will recognize us immediately, in his present state.”  
  
“Which is... a tree. Like _Pocahontas_.”  
  
Castiel's responding expression is one of bewilderment, and Dean welcomes this as an upgrade from the emotional roller coaster of trauma that has seemingly taken over Castiel during the last two days.  
  
“Never mind, it's a reference. Kid's movie, with... a talking tree.”  
  
“For what purpose does the talking tree serve?” Castiel puts a hand out to help Dean climb a particularly tall root, which visually ripples under Dean's foot, like the surface of a pond. Still, it stays solid under his shiny dress shoe, and though the root's reaction had put Dean's heart into his throat for half a second, he jumps past it without further incident.  
  
“I don't know. The writers needed a wise character to impart... wisdom.” Now that he's answered the question, he feels ridiculous for having done so, and even more so when Castiel squints in greater confusion. It's weird for Dean to think he'd kissed him not too long ago, since Dean still feels tremendous calm from being in Castiel's presence. “Look," he mumbles, and tries to ignore the heat warming his face, "trees are wise, okay? Especially willows. _Everyone_ knows that.”  
  
Castiel doesn't grace that with a response. He even rolls his eyes as they keep walking. Minutes later, though he stops, his hand held out to indicate Dean should stop, too.  
  
“Dean, do you hear that?”  
  
“What?” Dean spins on his heel, and then realizes that, yes, he does. A sound he had first dismissed as only the wind is now beginning to increase in volume, rising into chattering of low, quiet whispers. Small pieces of unknown languages trickle through the leaves: above, below, and around them. It does, in fact, feel like the forest is trying to talk to them, though at a much quieter volume than the insects, singing over them. “Oh..." Dean spins on his heel, "well, that's not creepy at _all_.”  
  
Castiel now stands in the center of a small clearing, his head tilted to listen for where the whispered voices are loudest. Dean begins to do the same, but Castiel is already moving in a specific direction, and so Dean follows him instead.  
  
“Cas, do you know where you're going?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Ah. Okay. Great, so we're just going to—” Dean shuts up when Castiel's palm lands on his chest, halting him once again.  
  
“Dean, _listen_.”  
  
Swallowing, Dean stands close to Castiel's side and mainly hears his friend — or _whatever_ Cas is to Dean now — breathing. Aside from that, Dean hears insects chirping in the grass, and birds crying out in the trees. Furthermore, he notices how the whispering, which is still rising in intensity, is making the grass below them tremble.  
  
“We're being talked to,” Castiel realizes, with a wide-eyed look. He crouches abruptly, and then plunges his hands into the dirt, beginning to dig.  
  
Unsure what else to do, Dean crouches awkwardly beside him and starts digging, too. “Uh, great, so do you have a whispering-wind-to-English dictionary, or — ”  
  
“ _Dean_.” Castiel's voice is long-suffering, and Dean can't help the little laugh that tumbles out of him at this.  
  
“All right, all right.”  
  
They keep digging until they reach a buried root, and then Castiel, with a sudden fervor, starts clawing at the ground around the root. He looks nearly like he's panicking, apparently heedless of the damage he's doing to himself, and so Dean shoves him backwards with a sharp reprimand about not destroying his hands. Aghast, Castiel sits back on his heels and watches Dean unsheathe the knife at his belt and begin to dig into the fertile, almost black dirt around the root.  
  
As Dean digs deeper, the whispers around them become clearer, but they remain in no language Dean knows how to name. By the time his knife has slammed into something hard and solid under the ground, the whispers have raised to a near-deafening crescendo, almost shouting at them with the terrible desperation of a thousand raised voices, all of them saying different things.  
  
“What the hell is this?” Dean tries to keep his voice strong, but it trembles out of him. Beside him, Castiel's face has drained of all color, and he's shaking when he reaches into the several foot deep hole they have dug with only their bare hands and a single knife.  
  
“It's... Dean... I'm... wait a moment.” Castiel's hand closes around the solid object in the ground, dragging it up in a spray of dirt. In the air, the object is revealed to be a dark silver flask, with sigils cut into it on all sides and a bright, searing light seeping out from just the top, where a cork stopper seems hardly strong enough to contain it.  
  
“Cas!” Dean shouts, well and truly alarmed by now. As the flask lifts higher, the air around it seems to shimmer, and Castiel's hand vibrates in a way that has nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with what looks like he's completely about to zone out into a different reality, for Dean can see the sky through it. “Put that down!” Dean smacks the flask out of Castiel's hand, and the second the flask strikes the ground, the deafening whispers and the intense light at the top of the flask vanish, save for a muted glow around the cork stopper.  
  
In the following quiet, Dean and Castiel's panting to catch their breath is the only thing they can hear for a long, terrifying pause. Even the birds and insects have grown silent, perhaps in fear. Sparing only a brief glance at his now-solid hand, Castiel leans over and then braces his forehead against the dirt, shaking horribly.  
  
Without waiting for an explanation for this reaction, Dean grabs Castiel under the arm and yanks him from the ground. Castiel stands, accommodating, but then topples over, his foot catching a branch and sending them both sprawling to the ground. Castiel begins to babble: gutteral words falling from his tongue at such a rapid pace that Dean can hardly hear the pauses between one word and the other. His gaze darts around, as though he does not know what to land his attention on, like he's seeing several different somethings that aren't there. Wanting to get Castiel's attention, Dean grabs his wrists and forces them to the ground, shouting Castiel's name until his blue eyes stop spinning around and land, firmly, on Dean.  
  
“I was... communicating,” Castiel whispers, "I... still maintain a vast, Enochian vocabulary." Under Dean's hands, his entire body is shaking, as though it's been electrocuted. “What's in the flask... it's... a piece of God, and it needs a vessel. It needs—”  
  
Dean's not sure he's ever heard worse news, _ever_. “Oh, hell, _no_ ,” he snaps. When he scrambles from the ground, he drags Cas right along with him. “We are not signing up for _that_ crap. Come on.”  
  
Barely able to walk, Castiel tumbles along behind him. “Dean, we can't _leave_ it here. It's dangerous, and powerful, and — ”  
  
Dean doesn't want that to be true, but unfortunately, he understands that it is. In a world of fallen angels, desperate to get home, and demons, ever-seeking a way to assert their dominance, it would not be safe to allow just _anyone_ to own such a power source.  
  
“ _Damn it_ _!_ ” Dean shouts, kicking a nearby tree root so hard his entire foot feels like it only _narrowly_ avoided shattering. He sways in pain, and Castiel rises to hold him up while Dean opens his mouth to yell at God a little more about the _unfairness_ of everything.  
  
“Dean,” Castiel pleads, as Dean continues to shout. “If we agree, we could use the god power to return what remains of my family to Heaven. We could—”  
  
“If being Michael's vessel would've turned me into a vegetable, Cas, what do you think a piece of _God_ would do to either one of us, huh?”  
  
Castiel doesn't have a valid response for this one. He shifts from one foot to the other, teeth gritted tightly in his jaw. “I brought Heaven's fall upon the world. I — ”  
  
“Metatron _forced_ that on you,” Dean snaps, and Castiel's eyes widen for half a second before narrowing completely.  
  
“I did _not_ tell you that.”  
  
Dean's heart skips a beat, and he has to take a few deep breaths to calm himself down. Images he does not want are swarming through his head, and he blinks them away. Without proper details, any violations Dean can imagine Castiel enduring that could affect him as much as he's been affected in the past two days are horrifying to even consider. Castiel has been seriously struggling for quite some time, having even confessed to having thought of killing himself, but Dean's very aware Castiel has definitely reached an additional level of trauma now.

Dean shakes his head and then, sighing, says, “No... but you basically just agreed I guessed right.”  
  
Castiel's jaw drops in a way that could be comical in some other situation, or perhaps some other life, but in this life, it's not funny at all. “You _tricked_ me.”  
  
“I'm sorry, okay?” Dean says, except he's not sure he is, so he adds, "No. Actually, you know what? I'm _not_ sorry that I _don't_ automatically assume the worst of you, even if _you_ do." He puts his hands to the sides of his head and paces, his face turned skyward. "The angels _falling_? Almost everywhere we go, in ruins? There's just _no way_ you _chose_ to let all this happen. You've looked more horrified by it than anyone!" But Dean doesn't have time to deal with that right now. They're in a creepy forest that can apparently _speak_ , and the whole place makes his skin crawl. He points at the dark silver flask. “Look, we can't leave that here, so we have to find a way to carry it, apparently without touching it! Do you have _any_ ideas?”  
  
Seeming like he's reeling from most of what Dean's just said, Castiel nods feebly for a moment, before he can manage to say, “It's... not going to be an easy task.” Perhaps it's no surprise that he ignored answering anything else that Dean has said about him. That's pretty much par the course, with him, unless Dean _really_ stresses the issue, which he's not going to do right now.

“What _else_ is new?” Dean huffs. He hadn't really expected that carrying God — even just a small _piece_ of him — could be anything _but_ difficult. "You and me, though... we'll figure it out somehow."

With a look between them that conveys _way_ more than either one of them has ever been able to put to words, they start looking for a way.

.

T.B.C.

.

2013.10.09

[.](https://dustlines.livejournal.com/32104.html)

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Thank you for reading!

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aahhhhh, um, Chuck wasn't as thought of during season 8. I guess this is a point of divergence here. A reminder that I wrote this in 2013. Smile and wave! Then... walk on by. :'D
> 
> I hope you're all doing great today!


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